Examples Of Transcendentalism In Civil Disobedience

As a transcendental work, “Civil Disobedience” maintains the idea of how Henry David Thoreau discusses how the government’s limitations can stop people’s moral freedom from expanding. This reflects ideas of transcendentalism because it understands the ideas of individual freedom and encourages citizens to take a stand against the government. As a transcendental writer, Henry David Thoreau focuses on individual right and freedom that has been controlled by the government. In presenting the government as a controlling force, Thoreau explains his lack of faith in the government and that people should fight back for their individual rights. Thoreau retaliated against the government by refusing to pay his taxes because he did not want to financially support the state of Massachusetts where he lived. He objected to the government because it allowed the injustice of slavery and went to war with Mexico. His doubt towards the government was also based off of his personal opinion about idealism and common sense. “But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no- government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” (Thoreau

“This American government — what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves.” (Thoreau 173). The government can’t function off of the people it governs because it constructs justice. Government is only a reality because a group of people agree that his government exists. The term “wooden gun” means it appears as a threat but is only harmless. That is how the citizens view the government which governs