THOREAU’S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY:

from the Gita to Walden to Captain John Brown

Edward F. Mooney

Religion and Philosophy 400/500 Spring ’08, Monday 12:45-3:30

1) World Religions in Concord: Orientalism reversed

2) Death on the Concord: Hinduism and transmigration

3) Emerson and Hafiz: Islam and transcendentalism

4) Thoreau: The Sublime as Divinity

5) Thoreau: Paradise Lost and regained

6) The Journal: Yogic meditative practice

7) Thoreau and Stoic Religion: Managing emotion

8) Walden as New Testament: Ecstatic epistemology

9) Woods, Water, and Sacred Space: Walking and apples

10) Spirit’s Materiality: Rituals, and domesticity

11) Slavery as Apocalypse: Judgment and Deliverance

12) A Railroad in Concord: Truth as Action and Exposure

13) John Brown: Christian Terrorist and Holy Martyr

14) Krishna and Arguna: Action, Death and Immortality

15) War as Desecration; Writing as Consecration

Partial reading list

Thoreau; A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Walden

The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau, ed Henry Hyde:

“Walking,” “A Defense of John Brown”; “Wild Apples”

Material on World Religions (partial list):

Wai-chee Dimock, Through Other Continents, “Emerson and World

Religions”, and “Globalization, world religions, and deep time”

Thomas A Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, a Theory of Religion

Annette Aronowicz, The Secret of the Man of Forty, History and Theory,

Vol. 32, No. 2. (May, 1993), pp. 101-118.