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Thoreau and Deliberate Living: Individualism Against the Market

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Nineteenth-Century Individualism and the Market Economy

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Abstract

This chapter turns from Ralph Waldo Emerson to his protégé Henry David Thoreau, who arrives at a starkly different assessment of the individual vis-à-vis the market, despite beginning from many shared concepts and values. Like Emerson, Thoreau embraced an individualistic ideal of self-cultivation built upon a foundation of personal conscience. However, he unambiguously articulates a doctrine of deliberate living against the mentality, values, and practices of the market, which he believed instrumentalized individuals and left them without the tangible or intangible resources to pursue genuine self-culture. Thoreau sees no way to outsmart the market, to use it without coming to serve it. His individualism is thus ultimately styled to be as antagonistic to the market as he believed the market was antithetical to individuality.

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  1. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Luke Philip Plotica

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Plotica, L. (2018). Thoreau and Deliberate Living: Individualism Against the Market. In: Nineteenth-Century Individualism and the Market Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62172-2_4

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