The Senses of Walden: An Expanded Edition [Paperback]

Stanley Cavell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226098133 | ISBN-13: 978-0226098135 | Publication Date: March 15, 1992

Stanley Cavell, one of America's most distinguished philosophers, has written an invaluable companion volume to Walden, a seminal book in our cultural heritage. This expanded edition includes two essays on Emerson.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Stanley Cavell is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value at Harvard University and the author of many books. These include Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, In Quest of the Ordinary, Themes out of School, and This New Yet Unapproachable America, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (March 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226098133
• ISBN-13: 978-0226098135
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #494,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cavell's reclaiming of Thoreau and Emerson as philosophers., June 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Senses of Walden (Hardcover)

More than a discrete work of literary criticism, this work plays an important part in Cavell's ongoing philosophical project. If Cavell's earlier work had Wittgenstein and Austin as involving a modernist break with the dominant Anglo-American philosophical tradition of positivism, then this work exemplified how analytical philosophy might continue. Cavell finds in the word conscious text of 'Walden' a linguistic economy complimentary to the idea of a logic or necessity to ordinary language. The American Transcendentalists are recast as philosophers who anticipate the turn away from metaphysics to the ordinary and everyday to be found in Wittgenstein. At the same time, as newly recovered American philosophers, they rehearse an encounter between English (empiricist) and German (idealist) philosophy before the split between these strands became institutionalized. 'The Senses of Walden,' then, is a key philosophical text by Cavell as much as a work of literary criticism on Thoreau. It is the text of a philosopher unable to completely give up an analytical training, but equally unwilling to ignore the broader cultural issues that such training obscures. Paul Jenner, University of Nottingham.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Senses of Walden, August 31, 2008

By 

K.N. (WA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Senses of Walden: An Expanded Edition (Paperback)

This is an exellent book and I believe it is a must-read for any serious readers of Walden--or, perhaps, any serious readers of Cavell. I think it will have particular interest for people who are interested in writing, literature and/or American cultural heritage.
That said, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who's not willing to embark on a book that requires dedication and multiple readings (then again, I wouldn't recommend either Walden or Cavell to any reader that is not very, very serious).

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars on the senses of reading, December 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Senses of Walden: An Expanded Edition (Paperback)

This is Professor Cavell's loving reading of Thoreau's "Walden." I was struck by his accounting of Thoreau's daily means. There is even the general ledger that Thoreau made of his financial bearings. To live so simply in a gentle world is a scholar's dream.