Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST (Join here), Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life; a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living! This week continues our exploration of the writings of Transcendentalists. We’re reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and exploring a few passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Portable Emerson).
Check out our bookshelf below for previous and future reading!
What is Transcendentalism?
Transcendentalism is an American literary, philosophical, religious, and political movement of the early nineteenth century centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another important transcendentalist was Henry David Thoreau. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the transcendentalists understood that a new era was at hand. They criticized their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity and urged that each person find, in Emerson’s words, “an original relation to the universe.” Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature and in their writing.
***Read previous: How to Think Like a Transcendentalist and The Wisdom of Walden.
Who is Henry David Thoreau?
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American philosopher, poet, environmental scientist, and political activist whose major work, Walden, draws upon these various identities in meditating upon the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being. He sought to revive a conception of philosophy as a way of life, not only a mode of reflective thought and discourse. An eclectic variety of sources informed Thoreau’s work. He was well-versed in classical Greek and Roman philosophy (and poetry), from pre-Socratics to Hellenistic schools. He was also an avid student of the ancient scriptures and wisdom literature of various Asian traditions.
The Wisdom of Simplicity
What does it mean to live simply? One of the topics we discussed in last week’s meetup was the wisdom of simplicity. Thoreau wrote,
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
What are some ways you can simplify your life? Most of us probably turn to electronics or ideas around becoming more organized to solve this question. But what if simplicity has more to do with simply being where we are?
Selected Passages
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. […]
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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