Thoreau on Freedom

by Lopez Colome, Pura S.

• ISBN13: 9781555914783
• ISBN10: 1555914780
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Fulcrum Pub

Summary

Although best known as America's first environmental philosopher, Henry David Thoreau left a broad legacy of writings on a variety of topics. Writing at a time when the issue of slavery was tearing our young nation apart, Thoreau, like his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote passionately about freedom for the slaves, as well as about his views on the Fugitive Slave Act and on the abolitionist John Brown. Applying the tenets of transcendentalism, Thoreau also wrote more broadly about society's lack of freedom, resulting from a consuming commitment to work and to other self-imposed limits. Thoreau's thoughts on freedom, which ring as true today as they did 150 years ago, have been gathered in a single volume. Jeffrey Cramer of the Thoreau Institute has edited these selections, with a foreword by Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson.

Table of Contents

Foreword	6	(10)
Arun Gandhi
Introduction	10	(12)
Jeffrey S. Cramer
A Note on the Texts and the Arrangement	22	(3)
Attending to Man---Thoreau on Freedom and Slavery
Farther from Heaven: On Slavery	25	(24)
Oh, Christian, Will You Send Me Back?: On the Fugitive Slave Bill	49	(16)
A Hero in This Field: On John Brown	65	(14)
Self-Emancipation: On Freedom	79