Abstract
In his Discourses, Epictetus writes, “When death appears to be an evil, we must have ready at hand the argument that it is our duty to avoid evils, and that death is an inevitable thing. For what can I do? Where shall I go to escape it?”1 This quote provides a suitable starting point by emphasizing the unpreventable and the avoidable. That which causes humans avoidable harm is “evil,” and we should elude it the best we can. The unpreventable aspects of life can never be evil; death is one of those inevitable features, so we need to accept it with equanimity. With a similar Stoic disposition, Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) accepts death’s unavoidability while seeking to imagine the best way to live a quality life in response.2 He assumes neither an overly optimistic nor a pessimistic view of human finitude; instead, Thoreau reassesses death as a sad occasion while realizing that it enables new life to develop. Loss of life is part of a natural cycle including birth, maturation, and old age; yet Thoreau sees death as a possible moment for inspiration that can stimulate us to a new, better self based on responsibility and respect for the deceased. This new, better self manifests the deceased’s life by weaving the loved one’s traces into the fabric of its burgeoning present and future. In this way, Thoreau provides an orientation supporting those left behind by focusing on deliberately reconstructing a quality life with the dead in mind.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Adams, Raymond William. “The Bibliographical History of Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” Bibliographical Society of America 43 (1949): 39–47.
Arnold, Philip P. The Gift of Sports: Indigenous Ceremonial Dimensions of the Games We Love. San Diego, CA: Cognella, 2012.
Bridgman, Richard. Dark Thoreau. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.
Carroll, Charles F. “The Human Impact on the New England Landscape.” In Thoreau’s World and Ours: A Natural Legacy, edited by Edmund A. Schofield and Robert C. Baron, 172–180. Golden, CO: North American Press, 1993.
Dustin, Christopher A. “Thoreau’s Religion.” In A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau, edited by Jack Turner, 256–293. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009.
Epictetus. The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, Trans. W. A. Oldfather, Vol. I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Furtak, Rick Anthony. “Thoreau’s Emotional Stoicism.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.2 (2003): 122–132.
Harding, Walter. The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1982.
Johnson, Linck C. Thoreau’s Complex Weave: The Writing of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, with the Text of the First Draft. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1986.
Kent, Phyllida Anne. “A Study of the Structure of Thoreau’s Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” Master’s Thesis, Carleton University, 1968.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love, Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1969.
Lebeaux, Richard. Thoreau’s Seasons. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts, 1984.
Lyons, Oren. “Keepers of Life.” In Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson, 42–44. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2010.
Mather, Cotton. “A Narrative of Hannah Dustan’s Notable Deliverance from Captivity.” In Puritans among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676–1724, edited by Alden T. Vaughan and Edward W. Clark, 162–164. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981.
Maynard, W. Barksdale. Walden Pond: A History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Merchant, Carolyn. “The New England Wilderness Transformed, 1600–1850.” In The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History, 25–38. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Mooney, Edward F. Lost Intimacy in American Thought: Recovering Personal Philosophy from Thoreau to Cavell. New York, NY: Continuum, 2009.
—. “Preservative Care: Saving Intimate Voice in the Humanities.” In Lost Intimacy in American Thought: Recovering Personal Philosophy from Thoreau to Cavell, 162–174. New York, NY: Continuum, 2009.
Porte, Joel. “‘God Himself Culminates in the Present Moment’: Thoughts on Thoreau’s Faith.” Thoreau Society Bulletin 144 (1978): 1–4.
Richardson, Robert D., Jr. Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986.
Robinson, David M. Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Ruehl, Robert Michael. “Preservative Care and Becoming Feral: Thoreau’s Religious Perspective in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies 21 (2013): 77–91.
Sayre, Robert F. “‘As Long as the Grass Grows and Water Runs.’” In Thoreau and the American Indian, 28–58. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Schofield, Edmund A. “The Ecology of Walden Woods.” In Thoreau’s World and Ours: A Natural Legacy, edited by Edmund A. Schofield and Robert C. Baron, 155–171. Golden, CO: North American Press, 1993.
Seeman, Melvin. “On the Meaning of Alienation.” American Sociological Review 24.6 (1959): 783–791.
Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991.
Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Ed. Carl F. Hovde, William L. Howarth, and Elizabeth Hall Witherell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
—. Journal, Volume 1: 1837–1844. Ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell, William L. Howarth, Robert Sattelmeyer, and Thomas Blanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
—. Walden. Ed. J. Lyndon Shanley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Wood, James Playsted. “Mr. Thoreau Writes a Book.” The New Colophon 1 (1948): 367–376.
Wyschogrod, Edith. An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology, and the Nameless Others. Chicago, IL: The Univervisty of Chicago Press, 1998.
Zinn, Howard. “As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs.” In A People’s History of the United States, 125–148. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2003.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2015 Thomas Cattoi and Christopher M. Moreman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ruehl, R.M. (2015). Thoreau’s Religious Response to Death. In: Cattoi, T., Moreman, C.M. (eds) Death, Dying, and Mysticism. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472083_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472083_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-50110-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-47208-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)