Vom Glück, in der Natur zu sein: Textauswahl aus »Walden«, der berühmtesten Schrift von Henry David Thoreau. Wie man ein unabhängiges, einfaches Leben ... (Weisheit der Welt 29)

by Henry David Thoreau

Wofür lebe ich – und lebe ich überhaupt richtig? Der amerikanische Schriftsteller Henry David Thoreau beantwortete diese Frage, indem er sich zwei Jahre lang tief in die Wälder von Massachusetts zurückzog, um eine Existenz in Einfachheit und Bewusstheit zu erproben. In seinem berühmten Buch »Walden« von 1854, dem die Texte dieses Bandes entnommen sind, hat er seine Erfahrungen vom alternativen Leben mitgeteilt. Es hat Menschen vieler Generationen Wege zurück zur Natur und zum freien Betätigen des Verstandes gewiesen – und regt noch heute dazu an.

»Der Gottvater aller Aussteiger« Die Welt»Was Thoreaus Leser bis heute fasziniert, ist wohl der Gegenentwurf unserer Wohlstandsgesellschaft« GEO»Einer der großen Nationaldichter Nordamerikas« GeoAnregung zur Selbstfindung in der Natur» Der Waldläufer, dessen wichtigstes Werkzeug seine Schuhe waren, und der stoische Individualist, der den Institutionen der Gesellschaft, auch ihren Zwangsmaßnahmen, eine provozierende Genügsamkeit entgegensetzte« Deutschlandfunk

Kindle Edition

Published April 23, 2025

About the author

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

In 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837, taught briefly, then turned to writing and lecturing. Becoming a Transcendentalist and good friend of Emerson, Thoreau lived the life of simplicity he advocated in his writings. His two-year experience in a hut in Walden, on land owned by Emerson, resulted in the classic, Walden: Life in the Woods (1854). During his sojourn there, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican war, for which he was jailed overnight. His activist convictions were expressed in the groundbreaking On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849). In a diary he noted his disapproval of attempts to convert the Algonquins "from their own superstitions to new ones." In a journal he noted dryly that it is appropriate for a church to be the ugliest building in a village, "because it is the one in which human nature stoops to the lowest and is the most disgraced." (Cited by James A. Haught in 2000 Years of Disbelief.) When Parker Pillsbury sought to talk about religion with Thoreau as he was dying from tuberculosis, Thoreau replied: "One world at a time."

Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. D. 1862.

More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tho...

http://thoreau.eserver.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Da...

http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu....

http://www.biography.com/people/henry...