Civil Disobedience In The Ponds By Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau’s philosophy of simplicity, authenticity, civil-disobedience and non-violent resistence can be clearly seen in the passages from chapter 9, ‘The Ponds’ from his book Walden. Henry David Thoreau is an American philosopher, poet and environmental scientist born in 1817. He included all these elements in Walden when reflecting on the problems of living in the world as a human. He wanted people to see philosophy as a way of life, not just as a reflective thought or discourse. Thoreau was well educated on the classic greek and roman philosophy and well as being familiar with modern philosophy such as Locke, Coleridge and Emerson. All of these philosopher’s influenced Thoreau’s own philosophy. His philosophical explorations of self and world gave him a great understanding of embodied philosophy and a non-dualistic account of mental and material life.…show more content…
Nature itself is simple and authentic, he describes the forest and being nothing short of a great setting and is ‘distinctly beautiful.’ Walden to him is rare and beautiful, so much so that nations do not defile it when then come and go from there, they simply let it be. ‘In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it.’ (Thoreau,
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