I hate to admit it, but I hadn't ever heard of Thoreau until Tom Hood posted about him. I have only recently looked at some of these people you mentioned. I knew about Kant of course, but I just thought he was an economist!!! Critique of Pure Reason - I used to leave on a coffee table to impress my friends.

I wonder if the reason I hadn't encountered Thoreau is because I'm British.

When looking at Transcendentalism, we were more likely to be pointed in the direction of Krishnamurti. Do you know about him? How does he differ from Thoreau?

[quote]When you look at this life of action

Penelope wrote:I wonder if the reason I hadn't encountered Thoreau is because I'm British.

Maybe Thoreau is blamed for the loss of the empire?

Thomas Hood wrote:Kant had no influence on Thoreau, and, as Robert points out, their philosophies are antithetical

The antithesis between Kant and Thoreau turns on their conflicting views of knowledge as representation or relation. For Kant, knowledge is the conceptual representation of reality, structured as language. This doctrine is known as the representational theory of truth. Thoreau has a more relational view of the nature of truth, whereby our knowledge of the world has a depth beyond the explicit concept, suggesting the theme of silent knowledge. This contrast between Kant and Thoreau underpins debate around the modern world view and its conflict with religious thought. Kant follows Descartes in accepting revelation as a politically expedient factor in thought, but also shared Descartes' contempt for the traditional religious argument that we know things because God told us. This is why Mendelssohn gave Kant the nickname 'the all-destroyer'. Thoreau questions the modern assumption that we can rely on reason rather than revelation, aiming to put back a sense of awe and wonder into thought. Kant also wrestled with this problem, but saw reason as complemented more by systematic empirical observation rather than by a sense of the divine. The point of Kant's critique was that pure reason is not sufficient to form knowledge, which requires that concepts are based on perception.

As I read them, both Kant and Thoreau have an ultimate goal of understanding transcendence, but they have markedly different approaches. Hence the antithesis is more between their methods than their goals. Both agree that the cosmos is transcendent in some sense, but where Kant suggests that mathematics is the key to knowledge, Thoreau is more mythopoetic.

Thomas Hood wrote:

Saffron wrote:. . .I am not sure what evidence you each are going on in arguing that Transcendentalism was not influenced by Kant. Please enlighten me.

Saffron, my understanding is that Kant had no influence on Thoreau, and, as Robert points out, their philosophies are antithetical:

Kant's theory of knowledge gave priority to mathematical reason, and here I think is a point of difference with Thoreau. Kant assigned more reality to a triangle than to a tree, while Thoreau saw the living thing as more real than the shape.

Tom

Robert & Tom,
I fully understand that Kant's idea that all thought was based on sensory perceptions from the objective world is the opposite of the Transcendentalist notion that the mind/intuition shaped ones understanding of the objective world/sensory perceptions/experiences. Just because Kant's theory of knowledge is different, even opposed to the Transcendentalist, does not mean they (in general, as a group) were not influenced by him. Thoreau was doubtlessly influenced by the other Transcendentalist and therefore it seems impossible to say that he was in no way influenced by Kant. The following quote from the very first post to my mind is misleading, if not false.

Not at all. Contrary to notions promulgated in numerous, authorative webpages, the Transcendentalism practiced by Thoreau had nothing to do with Kant, Unitarianism, or Harvard Divinity School.

Thoreau was responsible, accountable, and significant below the enigmatic surface. He should not be painted with the same Transcendental brush as Emerson, Alcott , or Very:

It is my understanding that this statement could be made about each one of the Transcendentalist, not just HDT. In fact, that is one of the striking things about the American Transcendentalist movement, it was not unified and rather there was much variation of ideas. It could almost be said that each of the individuals of the movement had their own brand of Transcendentalism.

Saffron wrote: The following quote from the very first post to my mind is misleading, if not false.

Thomas Hood wrote:Not at all. Contrary to notions promulgated in numerous, authorative webpages, the Transcendentalism practiced by Thoreau had nothing to do with Kant, Unitarianism, or Harvard Divinity School.

Well, I wouldn't want to say anything misleading or false , so if you would show me the error of my ways I'd be pleased to change. If Thoreau were influenced by Kant, I'd like something specific he said or did under that influence.

Walter Harding describes the alleged Kant connection on pp.62-3 of The Days of Henry Thoreau.

Harding wrote: ". . . there was a body of knowledge innate with man and that this knowledge transcended the senses -- thus the name "Transcendentalism." This knowledge was the voice of God within man -- his conscience, his moral sense, his inner light, his over-soul -- and all of these terms and others were used by the various Transcendentalists. But it was central to their belief that the child was born with this innate ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Unfortunately however as he grew older he tended to listen to the world about him rather than the voice within him and his moral sense became calloused. Thus did evil come into the world. And therefore it was the duty, the obligation of the good citizen to return to a childish innocence and heed once more the voice of God within him" (p.62).

Now, to me this looks more like Rousseau than Kant, although my knowledge of Kant doesn't extend much beyond Will Durant. Is there any suggestion in the writings of Thoreau that he embraced congenital infant goodness? Are "We need the tonic of wildness" (17.24) and "In wildness is the salvation of the world" supposed to apply to infants? I think they refer to an openness to mystery in the uniqueness and creative potential of every physical event.

Tom

Tom,
I think you misunderstand me. I am not meaning to suggest that the whole of Kant's philosophy influenced HDT. I believe the influence only to go as far as the one idea that I have referred to in my previous posts. An example: my approach to teaching and in general working with people has been greatly influenced by Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I have not read the whole book, nor do I need to in order to be deeply effected by the central idea in his book. My ideas are not identical to Freire's, but he is at the root of them. I use this example from my own thinking to explain how I see the relationship between one of Kant's concepts and the ideas of the Transcendentalist and even Thoreau.

Saffron

Thomas Hood wrote:...Walter Harding describes the alleged Kant connection

Harding wrote: ". . . there was a body of knowledge innate with man and that this knowledge transcended the senses -- thus the name "Transcendentalism." This knowledge was the voice of God within man -- his conscience, his moral sense, his inner light, his over-soul -- and all of these terms and others were used by the various Transcendentalists. But it was central to their belief that the child was born with this innate ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Unfortunately however as he grew older he tended to listen to the world about him rather than the voice within him and his moral sense became calloused. Thus did evil come into the world. And therefore it was the duty, the obligation of the good citizen to return to a childish innocence and heed once more the voice of God within him" (p.62).

Now, to me this looks more like Rousseau than Kant, although my knowledge of Kant doesn't extend much beyond Will Durant. Is there any suggestion in the writings of Thoreau that he embraced congenital infant goodness? Are "We need the tonic of wildness" (17.24) and "In wildness is the salvation of the world" supposed to apply to infants? I think they refer to an openness to mystery in the uniqueness and creative potential of every physical event. Tom

Hi Tom, these ideas show a strong conceptual affinity between Thoreau and Kant, despite their differences. Kant's argument was that the senses alone are not sufficient to provide knowledge, which also requires the ordering faculty of reason, also known as the transcendental imagination. Kant asks where we get our ideas of space and time, and observes that these are not the product of sense perception but of pure reason. He calls them the a priori categories of the understanding, because space and time are not objects that we can observe, but the formal framework into which observation is placed.

This illustrates what a slippery word transcendental is, in that Kant's claim that the ideas of space and time are transcendental is very different from traditional theism.

Your juxtaposition of 'openness to mystery' and 'return to innocence' is interesting in that many would argue they amount to the same thing. Kant's theory of morality, based on doing duty, does seem to have an affinity with Thoreau's ideas in that Kant held that conscience is the source of true duty.

Saffron wrote:Tom,
I think you misunderstand me. I am not meaning to suggest that the whole of Kant's philosophy influenced HDT.

Saffron, my objection to the Kant connection is based on a real consideration. Kant is right about the organizing powers of the mind: We go from the unknown to the known and achieve insight because the mind is active. But Kant misunderstood insight and attributes subtle objective features to the subjective mind (as in the subway example). Insight is similar to extrapolation and interpolation in mathematics. The mind continues and completes a trend already physically present. This is not the imposition of a form ("a transcendental flight of fancy") but a completion of inherent form, like the angel Michelangelo found trapped in a stone. That is, our experience is not an arbitrary imposition of meaning but a development of meaning already present. The clay of experience is as active in creation as is the potter. I hope shortly to give a concrete example of Thoreau's view on the working of the mind.

Tom

Robert Tulip wrote:Your juxtaposition of 'openness to mystery' and 'return to innocence' is interesting in that many would argue they amount to the same thing.

Probably many do so argue, Robert, "Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven." To enter the cloud of unknowing -- a return to the aboriginal, uninterpreted raw data of experience -- the adult must struggle against fixed interpretation, the dead hand of convention. ("Convention is death," Thoreau somewhere said.) The difference between infant and adult is that the adult has developed a self that is a framework for reinterpretation.

Kant's argument was that the senses alone are not sufficient to provide knowledge, which also requires the ordering faculty of reason, also known as the transcendental imagination. Kant asks where we get our ideas of space and time, and observes that these are not the product of sense perception but of pure reason. He calls them the a priori categories of the understanding, because space and time are not objects that we can observe, but the formal framework into which observation is placed.

Kant is correct in that no recognition (not just space and time) is given by the senses but requires an activity of mind. And he is also correct that recognition requires "pure reason" but this is reason as used in a peculiar sense by Transcendentalists to mean approximately intentionality. Will intruded into experience because the interpreter contributes to interpretation. Recognition has inherent moral quality because it give expression to the inner self (genius) of the interpreter. Recognition is always recognition as. I find the maxim "Style is character" a more convenient expression of this state of affairs. The way we recognize and express discloses personality.

Kant's idea of space and time as a priori categories is, I think, a mistake. This idea does not accord with modern science, and it differs from Thoreau's in that Thoreau thought in terms of the uniqueness of place and moment:

"Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly"(2.1). Or, "This frame [the partially completed house], so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder" (2.9).

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains" (2.33).

Are such statements possible for Kant?

Tom

To quote myself:

Tom,
You are quoting yourself...that is very Harold Bloom of you.