Thoreau Existentialism Analysis

Thoreau relates the complex relationship between man and his government through the nature of man’s individual virtuousness and the inherent clash between that individual virtuousness and an unjust government which seeks to deprive man of his humanity. Thoreau understands the inherent nature of man’s virtuousness as dependent upon his individual efforts and righteousness. For Thoreau, the most impactful social reform results not from “what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but from what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning” (“Slavery in Massachusetts 6). Thoreau emphasizes the obligation of man to express himself through his daily actions instead of his occasional political participation.

Despite explicitly existentialist emphasis on the nature of the citizen as an independent agent of free will, Thoreau rejects the Enlightenment notion of reality as a watch set ticking with its creator absent for millennia. Thoreau struggles with his theology in an analogical discussion of nosegays representing his existence. Thoreau initially proposes the nature of his existence as starkly lacking intelligent design: a reality existing “by chance” (“Sic Vita” 2). Thoreau’s religious contemplations initially hold consistent with the holy absenteeism characteristic of existentialism before he recognizes that an existentialist reality places his existence in the form of a nosegay “in a bare cup where its tender buds mimic life, for . . . they cannot, [sic] develop” (Bridgman 9). For Thoreau, an existentialist reality proves unsustainable, as life only continues through the thoughtful hand of G-d, maintaining the crop of life intentionally planted. Nosegays in an unsustainable vase result in the nipping of intellectual thought in the bud. In order for Thoreau’s intellectualism to flourish, his existence requires heavenly-ordained purpose -- not frequent existential crises contemplating purpose. Such establishment of divine purpose permits Thoreau to justify his life course and continue in his abolitionist, transcendentalist writings. Only when Thoreau’s purpose receives direction from “a kind hand” does his life bear “more fruits and fairer flowers” (“Sic Vita” 33, 39). Thoreau understands that the route to his literary success and fulfillment of purpose requires the unflinching faith that such purpose derives from a heavenly deity whose omniscience predetermines Thoreau’s success, and that all-powerful nature demands his success. Thoreau’s reverence produces an appearance of conflict with his existentialist political themes;