2.5 Henry David Thoreau

Notes

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) put Transcendentalism into practice. From 1845 to 1847 he lived in a small cabin at Walden Pond.

• Walden (1854) records his experiment in simple living: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." He also observed that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
• "Civil Disobedience" (1849) argues that individuals should refuse to support unjust laws. Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican-American War.
• His ideas later influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
• Worked example: Thoreau argues conscience, not majority rule, should guide moral choices; refusing to pay a tax you believe supports injustice is civil disobedience.