Excursions with Thoreau

Edward F. Mooney is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Syracuse University, USA. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Kierkegaard's Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs (Editor and Introduction, 2009), Lost Intimacy in American Thought (Continuum, 2009), and Excursions with Kierkegaard (Bloomsbury, 2012).

• Acknowledgments Preface 1. Overture 2. Celebration and Lamentation 3. Sympathy with Intelligence 4. Concord Reflections5. Transforming Perception6. Ethics and the Wild7. Expressive Bones 8. Child of the Mist9. Deaths and Rebirths 10. Affliction and Affinity 11. John Brown 12. Souls in Infinite Culture 13. Currents of Time 14. Grounding Poetry 15. Face of the River Closing Thoughts Closing Images, Reveries, Prayers Closing Passions Chronology, Works Cited, Credits Index

Henry David Thoreau brought to philosophical writing a personal voice and a situated, embodied sensibility. Edward Mooney proves himself a worthy heir to Thoreau’s legacy by speaking to his readers as an extracurricular intellectual and spiritual companion. We follow along as Thoreauvian saunterers, adventuring through rich fields of reverie, with Mooney as our engaging and always insightful guide. Excursions with Thoreau is a powerful illustration of how philosophy can live up to its name as the love of wisdom, grounded in wonder and defined by transformative encounters. It sheds new light on the work of a great American philosopher of the nineteenth century, and will introduce readers to Mooney’s distinctive mode of narrative reflection on human experience and its meaning.