Thoreau and Idealism: ‘Face to Face to a Fact'

Abstract

Believes that in light of the recent critical emphasis on Thoreau’s engagement with empirical studies of plant and animal life, it is crucial to see his increasing attention to the detail of the material world as one part of a larger project of categorization and explanatory theorizing about the unifying laws and structures of the universe. Claims the intellectual ferment of Walden is Thoreau’s growing recognition that “fact” and “theory” are inextricably fused. Notes that Thoreau found in Emerson’s Nature a theory that gave facts significance because of their interrelations. The recognition of nature as a changing, multifarious “phenomenon” of manifold relations leads more deeply and securely into the world of facts. Concludes the most crucial lessons of Walden are Thoreau’s repeated enactments of the intimate connection between observation and synthesis.