i know alot of you guys are familiar with these twos works and was wondering if you guys could help me out on a quick homework assignment. what i need is just a quick compare and contrast their similarities and differences of them if you can on these three subjects, nature conformity the individual just like 3 or so bullets per subject will do, thanks!!!!
Fractual, Emerson and Thoreau, my friend you are wading into deep waters with this. First, there is no quick comparison of their similarities and there are few, if any, differences. Scholars have spent lifetimes studying their work. They were at the forefront of the Transcendentalism movement (sometimes called "American Transcendentalism"), which some regard as the start of the hippie movement. Transcendentalism started with Immanuel Kant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant) Kant is best known for "transcendental idealism" — that we bring innate forms and concepts to the raw experience of the world, which would otherwise be unknowable. We perceive the world by means of our senses and innate intuitions, and therefore the thing-in-itself cannot be known. Our objects of knowledge, filtered by our senses, are simply appearances. Transcendentalism is defined as: A literary and philosophical movement asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition. Or: any system of philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical and material. Prominent Transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Orestes Brownson, Bronson Alcott, George Putnam, Frederick Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. As to the specific items of your inquiry, from Emerson; Nature: One of Emerson's most famous essays is "Nature". (http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature2.htm) Some quotes from Emerson about nature: Adopt the pace of NATURE; her secret is patience He is great who is what he is from NATURE, and who never reminds us of others. Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with NATURE. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Quotes from Emerson about conformity: Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. We boil at different degrees. Emerson had a lot to say about the individual: His (probably) most famous was in his essay "Self-Reliance". (http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm) In that essay he wrote: There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. You got to love a guy who can write a sentence like that. And now we turn to my favorite, Henry David Thoreau. Here is something Emerson said about Thoreau: From Emerson's Journal, June 24, 1863: In reading Henry Thoreau's Journal, I am very sensible of the vigor of his constitution. That oaken strength which I noted whenever he walked or worked or surveyed wood lots, the same unhesitating hand with which a field-laborer accosts a piece of work which I should shun as a waste of strength, Henry shows in his literary task. He has muscle, & ventures on & performs tasks which I am forced to decline. In reading him, I find the same thoughts, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step beyond, & illustrates by excellent images that which I should have conveyed in a sleepy generality. 'Tis as if I went into a gymnasium, & saw youths leap, climb, & swing with a fource unapproachable, -- though their feats are only continuations of my initial grapplings & jumps. On nature Thoreau said: Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. On conformity: Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. And about the individual: Go Confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined. When it is time to die, let us not discover that we never lived. The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. For the most part I used my best guess when I placed what they said under the headings of nature, conformity and the individual - but I could be wrong. I'm always glad to try to help others and I hope this helped you. Peace, poor_old_dad
awesome, that was perfect dad. you also managed to help me out with another question linking me to immanuel kants entry in wikipedia
alex do u ever do ur own homework? and anyway, i would have guessed u would enjoy reading up on emerson and thoreau....
