Jerry Killingsworth

Thoreau - Living Nature-Writing Walden Jerry Killingsworth

The author's focus is on Thoreau's life and his writing of Walden, and some attention is directed toward his "Living of Nature" and his "Writing of Walden," as well as his "Transcendental Philosophy" and his close relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another focus area is Walden II - by B. F. Skinner which seems closer to our general way of Life than Walden. In the end, Thoreau was one of our very best writers, and his Walden is a unique work of literature, & philosophy, as well as a warning against the dehumanizing potential of industrialization. It is even more significant now that we have been moving more and more away from nature and closer and closer to a form of Walden II. Thoreau was focused on the immediacy and concreteness of the here and now at Walden, but later he and Emerson would shift somewhat toward a transcendental - abstract view of nature as a symbol of another realm, such as a universal mind, but Thoreau was at his best as a writer and as an observer when he sat in solitude and just listened to the patterning of the rain. This was living nature, but we benefit greatly by his writing Walden.