(DOWNLOAD) "Following Thoreau's Instincts." by Nineteenth-Century Prose * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Following Thoreau's Instincts.
- Author : Nineteenth-Century Prose
- Release Date : January 22, 2004
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 191 KB
Description
Thoreau's confession of two "instincts" at the beginning of "Higher Laws" exaggerates a tension already inherent in the favorite Transcendentalist metaphor of "instinct." On the one hand, the metaphor signifies idealist intuition, a mode of higher knowledge associated with progressive human development; on the other, the metaphor depends on the recognition of a form of nonhuman intelligence. Under the influence of pre-Darwinian evolutionary debates contemporaneous with Walden's composition, Thoreau's two instincts assumed the forms of conflicting notions of "development" circulating at the time. While the "higher" instinct fits with idealist theories of human development, his representation of the "lower" instinct implicitly acknowledges the human kinship with animals that was central to transmutationist theories. Following Thoreau's representation of these instincts through the Walden manuscript's evolution paradoxically reveals both a continuing commitment to transcendental progressionism and an increasing evolutionary awareness of animal kinship and animal intelligence. **********
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