1. Thoreau’s Experiment: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...” November 8 th, 2010

2. Thoreau’s Philosophical Idealism Thoreau’s political philosophy is based on the ideal of individualism and absolutist morality—more specifically, a sense that the power of the individual derived from a higher law Gandhi’s jailhouse writings conclude with Thoreau’s image of the illusion of imprisonment: “I saw that if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was still a more difficult one to climb and break through before they could get to be as free as I was” (an idea cannot be imprisoned: an applied form of a philosophical idealism as old as Socrates) Crucial link between idealism and realism: “In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex” (Walden, “Conclusion” 217).

3. Thoreau as Surveyor of Walden Pond

4. The Structure of Walden Two competing drives in Walden: “an immediate openness to flux, a responsiveness to a continually changing world, and…—a desire to preserve and rescue from that world something of permanent shape and beauty” (See Martin Bickman, Reading Walden) How do the chapters, especially the early ones, seem to be paired to reflect these competing “volatile truths”?

5. Thoreau’s Use of Language If abstract spiritual reality is embedded in physical reality, then language puns become the source of serious metaphors: “We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease…” Paradox and redefinition: the savage may be the truly civilized man, the poor are the worthies of the world

6. “…in Wildness is the preservation of the world” “I WISH TO SPEAK a word for nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and Culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization; the minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that… Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West…The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world” (from “Walking,” 1862, 260,273, 274).

7. Conversation Starters In the bean field Thoreau releases some of his individual control over himself by saying that only God knows why he does what he does (referring to planting beans). Is Thoreau advocating God as himself, or is he actually relinquishing some power to a higher being? If he is relinquishing power to a higher being, why do you believe Thoreau, the transcendental control freak, is willing to relinquish to a higher power in this aspect of Walden? How does hoeing beans become a metaphor for writing? In “Visitors” Thoreau admires the Canadian woodchopper, going so far as to describe him as an ideal man, however he does think the woodchopper is defective in one manner. What is his problem with the woodchopper and why does he think this way? In “the village” what does Thoreau say is the chief obstacle to creating a new vision of life? In “higher laws” was Thoreau able to resolve the conflict between animality and spirituality?

8. Conversation Starters What sort of "persona" narrates Walden? What is the relationship between the Thoreau who lived in Walden Woods from 1845-1847 and the literary persona? What is Thoreau's basic philosophy (or philosophy of basics)? Choose a few memorable sentences in "Where I Lived and What I Lived For“: How does he redefine awakening? morning? the news? How can he travel most by living in one place? What is his attitude toward time? What is it that he is "mining" for in his “experiment”? How are books and reading important to Thoreau? How does he say his own book should be read? (How do his ideas on reading compare with Emerson's in "Self-Reliance"?) How do the many metaphors Thoreau uses to describe the ponds illuminate his concept of the ideal self?

9. Is Walden a complete text? Who are we in relation to it? With what does it leave us?