(October 4, 2018 at 8:01 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: My problem with Thoreau on this score is that, according to his transcendental metaphysics, he considered himself a law unto himself. Yes, there were indeed plenty of obvious injustices in his time, but he went to the contrarian extreme in denouncing them. Perhaps this was just the rhetorical tradition to which he was trained in Harvard, but he apparently found it very difficult to see the many gray areas in life, where pluses and minuses are mixed together in different proportions. That made him dismissive and superior as well as insightful about the shortcomings of those around him. Personally, I have become much more moderate than when I was first influenced by Walden, and for good reason since I was married and had to work at a regular job to make my living.
Thoreau's system was too much of a castle-in-the-sky, so it made better literature than philosophy. Nevertheless, his critiques were important for delineating the costs as well as the benefits of industrial societies, and his writings were influential because of them.
I think I give Thoreau more credit than you do. Since the time of Socrates, one of the chief defining characteristics of philosophers has been "gadflyness."
