The Art of Self-Improvement by Anna Katharina Schaffner

Author:Anna Katharina Schaffner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300247718
Publisher: Yale University Press

The healing powers of nature and solitude are also of pivotal importance to the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). In the mid-nineteenth century, he famously withdrew to a cabin on the banks of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was there that he sought to live deeply and “deliberately,” by the labor of his own hands, for two years and two months. Thoreau wished dramatically to simplify his existence, to live in a way that was reliant only on the “necessary of life.”14 His list of essential needs is short and sharp, including only food, shelter, clothing, and warmth. By contrast, he felt that most “of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only dispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”15 His aim was to live a life of complete simplicity and independence.

Above all, Thoreau wished to avoid living a life of “quiet desperation,” which, he maintained, was the sad fate of the vast majority of people.16 “Simplify, simplify” being his central mantra, he valued his freedom over luxurious carpets, fine furniture, and haute cuisine.17 “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,” he famously writes, “and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. . . .”18 These were not just catchy minimalist slogans. Thoreau took the economics of simple living extremely seriously. In the first chapter of Walden (1854), he introduces the captivating notion of “life cost.” Many of us unthinkingly seek to acquire as much money as possible, and to accumulate as many possessions as our salaries allow. Thoreau assesses the question of work from a radically pragmatic perspective. In fact, he turns it upside down. First determining his essential basic needs, he then proceeds to calculate the exact amount of money he needs in order to pay for these. His aim was not to work a single hour more than was necessary to cover his basic living expenses. He valued time and freedom over the luxuries of life. Thoreau established that he needed to work only six weeks of the year in order to cover his minimum expenses. He also chose to earn his money as a day laborer, which allowed him the freedom to be flexible with his hours. Moreover, he was able to detach completely from his work the second it ended.

For the remainder of the year, he was free to do what he really desired and valued: philosophizing and spending time in nature. The normative values of wealth and social esteem simply had no purchase in his personal system.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.