Freedom through Critique: Thoreau's Service to Others

Mason Marshall Freedom through Critique: Thoreau's Service to Others Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. —Thoreau, Waiden [M]ake them hunters ... mighty hunters at last ... hunters as well as fishers of men. —Thoreau, Waiden It is no wonder that Thoreau's detractors often see him as antisocial and nearly misanthropic. Throughout Waiden, for example, he moves back and forth between recounting his solitary experiments in the woods and sharply critiquing the lives his contemporaries lead. Of course, delight and optimism shine through his descriptions of building a house, taking walks, and bathing in the pond, but his critiques are pointed enough that two intellectual historians call Waiden "a diatribe against the life of the village and the farm."1 Thoreau's readers can justifiably ask why he returns so often to writing about the meagerness of other people's lives. Why, say, in Waiden does he repeatedly interrupt his account of hoeing beans to indict everyone else? If his society corrupts its members and nature is restorative, why not leave the society behind and concentrate just on communing with nature?2 An obvious conclusion to draw is that Thoreau is crankily focused as much on getting free from human culture as he is on getting free for a better way of living. It is possible, though, to take a more charitable view of his critiques of contemporary life. I want to suggest in this paper that they generally reflect an appropriate and carefully designed approach to guiding his readers toward a way of life which he deems ideal.3 His approach is appropriate given what that way of life is. To guide his readers properly by his standards, Thoreau has to emphasize negative freedom at least as much as positive freedom. Concentrating on negative freedom, as it is typically understood, we look backward at hindrances to get away from; when attending to positive freedom, we gaze forward toward the better lives that liberation should afford. Ultimately, though, Thoreau levels his critiques in the interest of getting us free for what he considers ideal. First and foremost, his critiques represent an attempt to perform a service to other people. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Spring, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 2 396 Mason Marshall Like certain recent commentators,4 I read his writings here as a revival of the traditions of "spiritual guidance" in ancient philosophy, traditions he quite likely was familiar with in being heavily conversant with ancient thought.5 Guidance in those traditions was spiritual not in a religious sense, but insofar as it was aimed at the transformation of the whole self. The goal of selftransformation was central to ancient philosophy. In fact, "Ancient philosophy was, above all, help with life's problems and spiritual guidance, and the ancient philosopher was, above all, a spiritual guide [kathégemôn]. Only secondarily — namely, insofar as this was considered essential to spiritual guidance — was ancient philosophy a theoretical explanation of the world."6 Cicero, for example — whose writings Thoreau was well acquainted with — offers guidance in part by setting himself up as an exemplar to be imitated (for example, in De officiis, 1.22.77). His choice to do so fits with the ancient view that studying how certain exemplars acted virtuously in particular circumstances can over time help cultivate in us a capacity to tell which actions are best in a given situation. As Cicero sometimes does, Lucretius often aims to have therapeutic effects on his readers. For example, in De rerum natura — which Thoreau also read — Lucretius makes his descriptions of war horrifyingly violent in ways that should jolt us into recognizing our own tendencies toward aggression and into reining them in. Ideally, as a result our everyday lives will change: taking up philosophy, we will spend each day trying "to build affectionate relationships" with family, friends, and society, working "to limit and manage [our] own desires," and avoiding the harm that others might inflict on us.7 The paradigmatic ancient spiritual guide probably is the figure of Socrates...