Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knoing [Paperback]

In his graceful philosophical account, Alfred I. Tauber shows why Thoreau still seems so relevant todaymore relevant in many respects than he seemed to his contemporaries. Although Thoreau has been skillfully and thoroughly examined as a writer, naturalist, mystic, historian, social thinker, Transcendentalist, and lifelong student, we may find in Tauber's portrait of Thoreau the moralist a characterization that binds all these aspects of his career together.

Thoreau was caught at a critical turn in the history of science, between the ebb of Romanticism and the rising tide of positivism. He responded to the challenges posed by the new ideal of objectivity not by rejecting the scientific worldview, but by humanizing it for himself. Tauber portrays Thoreau as a man whose moral vision guided his life's work. Each of Thoreau's projects reflected a self-proclaimed metaphysical ethics, an articulated program of self-discovery and self-knowing. By writing, by combining precision with poetry in his naturalist pursuits and simplicity with mystical fervor in his daily activity, Thoreau sought to live a life of virtueone he would characterize as marked by deliberate choice. This unique vision of human agency and responsibility will still seem fresh and contemporary to readers at the start of the twenty-first century.

Alfred I. Tauberis Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. Among his previous books areConfessions of a Medicine Man(1999) andThe Immune Self: Theory or Metaphor?(1994).

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Eternal Now
2. Three Apple Trees
3. Another Apple Tree
4. Thoreau at the Crossroads
5. Thoreau's Personalized Facts
6. Thoreau's Moral Universe
7. The Self-Positing I
Epilogue: Mending the World
Notes
References
Index

Tauber's book is encylÃ9