Since its publication in 1849, Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience has influenced protestors, activists and political thinkers all over the world. Including the full text of Thoreau's essay, The Routledge Guidebook to Thoreau's Civil Disobedience explores the context of his writing, analyses different interpretations of the text and considers how posthumous edits to Civil Disobedience have altered its intended meaning. It introduces the reader to: the context of Thoreau's work and the background to his writing the significance of the references and allusions the contemporary reception of Thoreau's essay the ongoing relevance of the work and a discussion of different perspectives on the work. Providing a detailed analysis which closely examines Thoreau's original work, this is an essential introduction for students of politics, philosophy and history, and all those seeking a full appreciation of this classic work.

Since its publication in 1849, Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience has influenced protestors, activists and political thinkers all over the world. Including the full text of Thoreau's essay, The Routledge Guidebook to Thoreau's Civil Disobedience explores the context of his writing, analyses different interpretations of the text and considers how posthumous edits to Civil Disobedience have altered its intended meaning. It introduces the reader to: the context of Thoreau's work and the background to his writing the significance of the references and allusions the contemporary reception of Thoreau's essay the ongoing relevance of the work and a discussion of different perspectives on the work. Providing a detailed analysis which closely examines Thoreau's original work, this is an essential introduction for students of politics, philosophy and history, and all those seeking a full appreciation of this classic work.

Throughout this original and passionate book, Bob Pepperman Taylor presents a wide-ranging inquiry into the nature and implications of Henry David Thoreau's thought in Walden and Civil Disobedience. Taylor pursues this inquiry in three chapters, each focusing on a single theme: chapter 1 examines simplicity and the ethics of "voluntary poverty," chapter 2 looks at civil disobedience and the role of "conscience" in democratic politics, and chapter 3 concentrates on what "nature" means to us today and whether we can truly "learn from nature." Taylor considers Thoreau's philosophy, and the philosophical problems he raises, from the perspective of a wide range of thinkers and commentators drawn from history, philosophy, the social sciences, and popular media, breathing new life into Walden and asking how it is alive for us today. In Lessons from Walden, Taylor allows all sides to have their say, even as he persistently steers the discussion back to a nuanced reading of Thoreau's actual position. With its tone of friendly urgency, this interdisciplinary tour de force will interest students and scholars of American literature, environmental ethics, and political theory, as well as environmental activists, concerned citizens, and anyone troubled with the future of democracy.

Much of the world today views America as an imperialist nation bent on global military, economic, and cultural domination. At home few share this negative view, largely because of a widespread belief in the irreproachable purity of our goals. Bob Pepperman Taylor, however, argues that our moral self-righteousness may potentially imperil our democratic ideals and threaten democracy itself by plunging us into illiberalism.

Taylor looks closely at six key thinkers in the Progressive tradition whose work helps illuminate the essential flaws in our current thinking about democracy. Their writings, he contends, offer insights that can reinforce and strengthen a vigorous democratic faith, warn us of the dangers inherent in various forms of democratic arrogance, and counsel a kind of doubt or humility that would make us much better democratic citizens.

All six thinkers--Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Carl Becker, and Aldo Leopold--were active in the first half of the twentieth century and grew out of and reflect the temper of American Progressivism, which spawned the most creative, optimistic, and committed generation of democratic theorists and activists in American history. Their writings, in Taylor's view, illuminate harmful beliefs that constrain and even delude the popular democratic imagination in America.

Taylor argues that Croly, Lippmann, and Dewey overestimate the normative value of science and underestimate the utopianism of their democratic visions. On the other hand, Addams, Becker, and Leopold resisted these scientific and utopian temptations. By advocating a kind of humility, they offered reform-minded Americans a stronger understanding of what it meant to practice democratic citizenship, however imperfectly. Addams counsels us to "walk humbly before God"; Becker embraces the Progressive faith in equality and justice but discards its dogma of certain progress; and Leopold employs moral authority rather than his scientific training to defend our natural inheritance in what he recognizes is an ambiguous political debate.

These three, Taylor argues, by aiming less at the grand transformation of the human condition than at practical solutions, show greater respect for democratic possibilities than did their more messianic counterparts. They promote a much more modest understanding of the possibilities both for democracy and the role of science in informing democratic practice. They also point to a clearer understanding of the virtues that citizens should cultivate if democracy is to prosper.

Is democracy hazardous to the health of the environment?

Addressing this and related questions, Bob Pepperman Taylor analyzes contemporary environmental political thought in America. He begins with the premise that environmental thinking is necessarily political thinking because environmental problems, both in their cause and effect, are collective problems. They are also problems that signal limits to what the environment can tolerate. Those limits directly challege orthodox democratic theory, which encourages expanding individual and political freedoms and is predicated on growth and abundance in our society. Balancing the competing needs of the natural world and the polity, Taylor asserts, must become the heart of the environmental debate.

Contemporary environmental thinking derives, according to Taylor, from two well-established traditions in American political thought. The pastoral tradition, which he traces from Thoreau through John Muir to today's deep ecology, biocentrism, and Green movement, appeals to moral lessons that nature can teach us. The progressive tradition--which he traces from Gifford Pinchot to the apostate neo-malthusians (who reject the commitment to democratic equality) and liberal theorists like Roderick Nash, Christopher Stone, and Mark Sagoff--focuses on the role that nature plays in supporting a liberal democratic society. This analysis sidesteps the usual anthropocentric-biocentric formulation of the debate, which tends to center on the most appropriate conception of nature abstractly considered, and reorients the discussion to a consideration of the relationship between our political and environmental values. If we are to stem the thoughtless pillaging of the environment, Taylor contends, that's where the changes must occur.

Any satisfactory resolution of the tension between the garden and the machine must draw upon the best of both the pastoral and progressive traditions, Taylor concludes. The best of pastoralism teaches us that any reform must challenge the human arrogance and crude materialism that permeates much of liberal society.

In addition to Nash, Stone, and Sagoff, Taylor discusses other contemporary thinkers such as Garrett Hardin, Paul Ehrlich, Robert Heilbroner, William Ophuls, Julian Simon, Robert Paehlke, J. Donald Moon, Kirkpatrick Sale, J. Baird Callicott, Holmes Rolston, Paul Taylor, Barry Commoner, and Murray Bookchin.

"The contemporary environmental movement needs to step back from the hurly-burly of its political struggles to do some deep thinking about ends and means. This book is a useful tool for doing that. It is a clearly written, well organized, and thoughtful guide to many of the more important thinkers who have appeared in recent decades on environmental issues and ethics. Best of all, the author points us to what may be the central question of our times: how can we achieve a society that is at once true to our democratic traditions and yet recognizes in nature an intrinsic set of values?"--Don Worster, author of "Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas."

Emphatically revisionist, Bob Pepperman Taylor reveals a Thoreau most people never knew existed. Contrary to conventional views, Taylor argues that Thoreau was one of America's most powerful and least understood political thinkers, a man who promoted community and democratic values, while being ever vigilant against the evils of excessive or illegitimate authority. Still widely viewed as a remarkable nature writer but simplistic philosopher with no real understanding of society, Thoreau is resurrected here as a profound social critic with more on his mind than utopian daydreams. Rather than the aloof and very private individualist spurned by conservatives and championed by radicals and environmentalists, Taylor portrays Thoreau as a genuinely engaged political theorist concerned with the moral foundations of public life. Like a solicitous "bachelor uncle" (a self-referential phrase from his journals), Thoreau persistently prodded his fellow citizens to remember that they were responsible for independently evaluating the behavior of their government and political community. Taylor contends that, far from being confined to a few political essays ("Civil Disobedience," "Slavery in Massachusetts," and "A Plea for Captain John Brown"), Thoreau's political critique was a lifetime project that informed virtually all of his work. Taylor's persuasive study should send readers back to Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and the 14-volume Journal, among many other writings, for a provocative new look at one of America's most influential writers.