Thoreau’s Neighbors
Thoreau’s Neighbors
This chapter explains what “minding our own business” means, arguing that minding your neighbors' business and minding your own work is in tandem when it comes to self-examination and transformation. People listen and observe and then compare their neighbors' lives to their own. From the vantage point as witnesses to their neighbors' lives, people gain insight into their vulnerabilities, moral resources, and the terms of their happiness. Thoreau's Walden is the great American reflection on the quality of life at home, in this place, with these neighbors. Good neighbors emerge in Thoreau's work as essential to self-understanding and care of the self. The chapter also shows how Thoreau presents treating one another as neighbors as the “saving remnant” of democracy in America.
Keywords: neighbors, self-examination, neighbors, moral resources, happiness, Thoreau, Walden, democracy
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
