Philosophy of Henry Thoreau, The: Ethics, Politics, and Nature

About the Author
Lester H. Hunt is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA. He now lives near Lake Davis in the northern Sierra Nevada. He has written on political philosophy, ethics, the philosophy of Nietzsche, aesthetics, and contemporary moral issues. He is the author of Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue (1991), Character and Culture (1997), and Anarchy, State, and Utopia: An Advanced Guide (2015); he is co-author, with David DeGrazia, of Debating Gun Control: How Much Regulation Do We Need? (2016).
Henry Thoreau is widely considered to be one of the greatest nature writers, among whose best-known works are Walden and Walking. In this book, Lester Hunt shows that his writings have a compelling philosophical dimension as well.
Thoreau seldom argues for his ideas the way other philosophers do. Rather than setting up proofs designed to trap the reader into agreeing with him, he challenges the reader – by means of narratives, jokes, questions, and paradoxes -- to recognize possibilities previously unknown and unexplored.
Thoreau's own explorations led him to several distinctively philosophical theories: an intuitionist metaethics, an ethics based on virtue and self-realization, a politics that is fundamentally individualist and anarchist, and a secular religion in which nature is pre-eminent.