Henry David Thoreau and His Contribution to Transcendentalism Essay

Henry David Thoreau, a French descendant, was born(p) in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts a graduate of Harvard College with no literary distinction. Through erupt his life he executed a very strong Saxon genius, as his ancestors had been kn cause. As an ordinary young man, he began to work for a living. After his graduation, he joined his brother in give lessonsing in a private school, which he stayed for a darn. He later left to enter into manufacturing work making a different and get around pencil. He was successful in his business but refused doing the akin thing.He went back to school to teach and deliver lectures became a private tutor to children of prominent families. He got employ manpowert, yet his life seemed no content for he thought of doing what he is called for. Only by then he will find core in his existence. For his friends, he was full of courage, had good cheer and deep affection for his family. His love for a simple(a) living moved him to devote most of his writing virtually earthy surroundings and natural history. His natural disceptation in philosophic views made him wrote, which as young Henry, periled independent thoughts that caught Mr.Ralph Waldo Emersons interest about the boy.A good friendship actually started there between Mr. Emerson and Henry Thoreau, which despite age inequality and of tempera handstal impediments found deep and lasting friendship. Thoreau worked for the family as tutor for Emerson kids. From Thoreaus friendship with Mr. Emerson his ideology and inclination to the philosophy of transcendentalism began. As Ian Ward stated, The interest in transcendentalism that Thoreau shared with his sometime mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born of this gestation, as was the comparable rejection of ideology which underpinned this new intellectual divinity.Henry David Thoreau and Transcendentalism Transcendentalism as a movement began as a radical religious movement, which is opposed to conservative institution, thou gh the philosophical opinion was developed by Plato. Historically, transcendentalism according to Peter Carafiol, is an intellectual property emergence out of Kant and liaise by English and German Romanticism. Formerly, it was dissatisfaction with Unitarianism with congregationalism and Protestantism, and with Catholicism, as the Carafiol said.For the Americans, transcendentalism frustrates the desire for definition by leaving out so many out of the problems scholars have raised about it. It involves an interpretation rather than exposition. It is a mental and a spiritual attitude sought to find the source of all truth within the nature of man. It is actually in the sphere of religion the narrower sense of Unitarianism of religion. Thoreau gave a new outlook for transcendentalism since he is inclined to nature and surroundings.He was by character a scientist, which was evident in his writings and works. And his growing idea of transcendentalism was often inclined with science, which was opposed to the belief of others that identified Thoreau in the line of the scientists while others recognized him as a philosopher. Alfred I. Tauber, stated that, he put himself at odds both with the dreamer moralizing philosophy of Emersonian Transcendentalism and with ascendant professionalized positivistic science which divorced nature from the knowing subject.Indeed, he was able to draw unity to different engagement to intellectual inquiry that he had, and despite competing interests, as Tauber further stated, Thoreau was able to follow his own path in studying nature, guided by the same fierce independence that marked both his experimentation in personal economy and his political protagonism through which, the term transcendentalism has been applied to science known as the doctrine of metaphysical idealism. At this crossroads of Thoreaus life emerged his character in Transcendentalism and the view about metaphysical idealism.Thoreaus Contribution to Transcendentalism (development in Henrys life) Thoreau had lived a normal life just same(p) anybody else that observed and experienced negative sides of life. However, upon his realization, he chose to reside in a kin in the woodland alone for sometime. During his life, he made some contribution to the American transcendentalism. Remarkably, Thoreaus writings from letters to books contributed to the fete of Transcendentalism during his plosive consonant.It made a significant effect on many campaign against social upheaval and to the development of the concept of the philosophy. Thoreaus writings would actually tour the reader about his life and his contribution to the movement. The following are some of the contributions that attributed to the development in his life. Manhood and Race Henry David Thoreau as a young boy was often working with his mother at the farm grazing pastures. From this experience, he move his love for solitude and communion with nature.Already associated with Emerson, he moved and lived in a small house alongside the northern shore of Walden Pond where he spent his life cultivating beans and other vegetables and taking bid of animals. His many desperations and desperation that he had seen around developed in him representative isolation. He had seen slaves, laboring men men out of desperation had to work continuously for economy. So, he conceptualized these figures in general which means, it is worldwide phenomena that men labor under mistakes, that men labor for others while other men were captive to their enterprise.This scenario had been recorded in his book Slavery in Massachusetts in which he made arguments about the complex contradiction in terms between rich and poor and in the end he thought both slaves in their own way. At this burden, he made his way to clearly redeem and redefine manhood. Manhood during his period he saw men in order to follow the trend had to compete against each other and to revere inequality in the world of capital ism and dissonance. On the other hand, transcendentalists view each person as infinite with emotion, intellect, creative, dynamic, subjective, imaginative, and conjurer.This means equality of rights and enjoyment of the blessings of God on earth. Thoreau experienced living alone in the woods just to realize how to live truly free and uncommitted to establish an original human relationship with nature. There, he raised his own food, observed nature, and explored his inner self. In his book Walden, it is stated God himself culminates in the present momentAnd we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us.His Civil Disobedience July 1846 when Thoreau decided to go to town for a shoe repair, when he was arrested for non paying tax. As early as 1842 Thoreau refused from paying tax. In his bidding he said, I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest and not the pr iest the schoolmaster Though, he was seen as a rebel for his refusal of paying his tax, yet for his contemporaries, it was a display of non-compromise, which is a sign of principle.Because the underlying question in this action was how are to respond to injury and grievous? Thoreau in his book Civil Resistance evoked the existing positive meanings of resistance for him, it does mean, in Ballous phrase, resistance of injury with injury In others opinion, his philosophy of non-violent reaction is avoidance of involving political science in the issue. His is enlightened liberalism- a close-minded and concerned with the individual conscience and not collective action.As it is said, Thoreaus civil disobedience is the choice he makes when he has no choice but to act. Thoreaus Last Event in His Life Throughout his lifetime, he devoted his time searching for natural philosophy and science. His book Walden had the details of natural facts that believed to be the foundation for his transc endental flights. His purpose is to integrate or use Science to support his idea of the philosophy. As a young boy, he used to restore something for a change, for he saw beauty beyond something like changing the water wheel.His life in the farm gave a lot of realization in life. The beauty that he saw being a sensitive observer found meaning and significance to every angle and function of the world. At this point would enter spiritualized self that communes into that microcosm. During his latter year, he became more systematic in his intellectual reorientation of existent details of his natural surroundings. He already developed mastery of a complex symbolic of visionary insights.As David Robinson tried to emphasized, Thoreaus immersion in scientific study and his contribution to the science of his twenty-four hour period must be emphasized, so must his ambivalence about this work, and his insistence that it has been within a big framework of philosophical inquiry After sometime in the Walden Pond, he decided to leave for he realized that he still had several more eld to live. For him, it is a necessary and positive gestures, the signs of an innate stance of openness to new experience. Thoreaus life at the Walden Pond provided him the most productive period of his literary life.While his new life outside the farm fulfilled his emotional need for companion. He continued living and died at age forty four due to tuberculosis in 1862. coda Thoreau was just one of the many contributors of the modern transcendentalism but his ideology is closely associated with living just in nature. His life experiences contributed to his ideology that made him preferred to live independently and alone for two years at the Walden Pond. Throughout his life, he devoted his time earning for a living and writing books, letters, poem, and stories that became a striking source of knowledge about his view of transcendentalism.In the process, Thoreaus life and writings had been a n instrument in the institution of some movements. For instance, since his ideology is associated with the masses or for the poor, it served an inspiration for political changed of socialist counties. There is a spiritual and social implication to that ideology that countries like Bulgaria could relate to that especially his Civil Disobedience book. However, we could prescribe that Thoreaus approach is more on individual communion with God and nature for self-contentment.