Henry David Thoreau · Philosophy
Thoreau’s final teaching: that the real frontier is inward, that reform must begin with the self before the world, and that most people go through life asleep. ‘Only that day dawns to which we are awake’ - and to wake up is the whole moral task.
You learned that Thoreau made awakening the center of his ethics - ‘to be awake is to be alive,’ ‘only that day dawns to which we are awake’ - and insisted on self-reform before world-reform and on an inner frontier to be explored. Explain what he meant by being ‘awake’ and why he t…
Leads to Confucius.
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