H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [EMAIL PROTECTED] (March, 2005)
Philip Cafaro. _Thoreau's Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue_. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. xii + 272 pp. Index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8203-2610-0. Reviewed for H-Nilas by Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, Department of International Studies, American University of Sharjah. When Henry David Thoreau died, three hundred of Concord's four hundred schoolchildren followed the processional to his grave. This is because he had spent much time being one of the villagers it takes to raise a child, teaching children especially about the nature of the land around Concord. He knew where to swim, knew most of the wildlife by name--and he kept learning. For instance, his journals during his last years were filled with endless observations of forest succession. In more ways than one, Thoreau knew how and where to fish. All reports of his death, too, emphasize his serenity and positive outlook through the course of his tuberculosis. His comments to friends and visitors were gracious, taking the shock of his deathly appearance from them. This must be another reason why so many children, once asked by the moribund Thoreau to come in from the street, did. They kept returning on their own accord. Even at the burial, Thoreau's memory expressed vitality to those present--a point made by Louisa May Alcott, who was at the grave. Here he was buried in the ground with life growing around him, and he had always taught that we are a part of nature. (clip) The most helpful parts of Cafaro's study are his explorations of Thoreau's refusal to participate in either slavery or imperial wars and Thoreau's environmental ethics. Cafaro's study allows us to see these two areas of normative concern as continuous. Moreover, Thoreau's point of departure for this continuity is different from that taken in either social ecology or ecofeminism--the only fields of environmental ethics to state such a continuity at all.[10] Thus, from the standpoint of both social justice and environmental ethics, Cafaro's Thoreau discloses an exciting possibility for ethical direction: environmental protection and social justice are parts of the same project--to respect freedom, and to do so out of humanity. full: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=310771117820484 -- www.marxmail.org
