Indywidualizm, samotność, bunt. Koncepcja obywatelskiego nieposłuszeństwa Henry’ego Davida Thoreau
Individualism, Loneliness, and Rebellion. Henry David Thoreau's Concept of Civil Disobedience

Summary/Abstract: Individualism, Loneliness, and Rebellion. Henry David Thoreau's Concept of Civil Disobedience. The first few decades of the nineteenth century in American historiography is called the Romantic Revolution period. Social and political changes of the era were accompanied by passionate ideological disputes. At that time, several informal groups of spiritual quest and intellectual fraternity were established. The Transcendental Club, founded by R.W. Emerson in Concord (New England), was one of the most important societies of this kind. The transcendentalists were an influential group of philosophers, writers, and social activists who were united in protest against industrial transformation in New England, against slavery in America, and against the predatory war with Mexico. Emerson’s closest collaborator and his greatest disciple was H.D. Thoreau, the author of concept and practice of civil disobedience. Based on the example of the biography and works of Thoreau, the author of the article examines the philosophical sources of Thoreau’s political choices. She examines the path that led Thoreau, a recluse focused on internal development and solitary contemplation of nature, to the barricades of the hottest ideological disputes of the time. What prompted the writer to leave his forest hermitage and renounce obedience to a powerful state, an arising empire?

• Details
• Contents