Henry David Thoreau
Live simply and close to nature, and refuse to obey laws that are unjust, even if it means going to jail.
Placement
“Walden” and civil disobedience: simple living and resistance to unjust laws.
Key ideas
- Civil disobedience
- Simple living
Influence
Influenced by 1
Ralph Waldo Emerson
influenced by ✓
Thoreau, Emerson’s protégé, took up his ideals of self-reliance and of nature as spirit (Nature, 1836) and tested them at Walden Pond on Emerson’s land (Walden, 1854). R. W. Emerson, Nature (1836); “Self-Reliance” (1841); H. D. Thoreau, Walden (1854); SEP “Henry David Thoreau”
Ralph Waldo Emerson › 1803–1882
Influenced 3
Leo Tolstoy
influenced ✓
Tolstoy read Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience (1849) in the 1890s, found in it support for refusing obedience to unjust state demands, and urged a Russian translation. H. D. Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849); L. N. Tolstoy, letters to V. G. Chertkov (1890s)
Leo Tolstoy › 1828–1910
Mohandas K. Gandhi
influenced ✓
Gandhi read Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience in South Africa around 1907 and printed extracts in Indian Opinion, while insisting his resistance had begun before. G. Hendrick, “The Influence of Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ on Gandhi’s Satyagraha”, New England Quarterly 29 (1956); M. K. Gandhi, letter to P. Kodanda Rao (1935)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Mohandas K. Gandhi › 1869–1948
Martin Luther King Jr.
influenced ✓
King recalled that Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience, read at Morehouse College, was his first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance (Stride Toward Freedom, 1958). M. L. King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (1958), “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”; H. D. Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Martin Luther King Jr. › 1929–1968
Works
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
- 1854Walden
Two years in a cabin by a pond: I wished to live deliberately.
Position
Thoreau tested Transcendentalist ideas in his own life. At Walden Pond he wanted to “live deliberately”, to reduce life to its essentials and to discover how little one truly needs. Walden is both an account of that experiment and a critique of a society in which most people “lead lives of quiet desperation” in pursuit of possessions. In his essay on civil disobedience he argued that conscience stands above the law: when the state commits injustice, such as supporting slavery, the just person must refuse to cooperate, even at the cost of prison. Gandhi and Martin Luther King drew on this essay, and Walden became a classic of environmental thought.
Life & context
Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, studied at Harvard and became a friend and protégé of Emerson. From 1845 to 1847 he lived in a self-built cabin on Walden Pond on Emerson’s land. He spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a tax that would support slavery and the war against Mexico, and he was a committed abolitionist.
Further main works
- A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
- A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
- Life Without Principle (1863)
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