From self-culture to militancy, from conscience to intervention
Subtitle: Henry David Thoreau between liberalism and communitarianism
By: Christian Maul
Series: Mosaic : Studien und Texte zur amerikanischen Kultur und Geschichte -- Band 40
Publisher: WVT, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Trier
Language: eng
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9783868212808
Subjects: Communitarianism; Political and social views; Criticism and interpretation; Liberalism; History
Other titles: Henry David Thoreau between liberalism and communitarianism
Description: "Readers of Thoreau rarely react with equanimity to his writings. While his admirers celebrate this Transcendentalist as a pioneer of modern environmentalism or as a major inspiration for civil rights leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, his detractors tend to dismiss him as a cheap imitation of his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Moreover, from James Russell Lowell to today, some of the most scathing criticism has been directed at what appears to be the escapist and anti-social thrust of his individualism. This book focuses on the latter charge. It examines Thoreau's concept of the self in light of the recent controversy between proponents of liberal individualism, notably John Rawls, and a group of communitarian theorists that includes Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. From this perspective, the seemingly isolationist and misanthropic inclinations pervading Thoreau's life and work are revealed as initializing a project of self-fashioning that is profoundly community-oriented and that aims at counteracting the loss of social values."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Doctoral Universität Heidelberg 2010.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 264-280).