An analysis of the Confucianism in Thoreaus Walden 浅析梭罗作品《瓦尔登湖》中的儒家思想.docVIP

Introduction In the middle of 19th century, America sped up his step to industrial society. In1844, Engles indicated clearly that: “American’s industry has developed on a large scale.”(Engels, 2008, P17) In the northeast part of New England, the textile industry was extremely prosperous, steam engine had been used widely, and railways were also built between the major cities. In such a time when capitalistic economy developed rapidly, people were absorbed in business and getting rich, believing that the only goal for living was pursuing profit and gathering money. In Thoreau’s idea, money could make humans lose their souls, and make humanity distorted. In “Economy” of Walden, Thoreau wrote: “How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-high crushed and smothered under its load! The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.” Thoreau considered money, land, house, livestock, farming tool as unnecessary things: It is man’s misfortune to “inherit farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools.” He thought “these are more easily acquired than got rid of.” Therefore, Thoreau moved into the wood and lived there for 26 months to get rid of the society’s complexity. And Walden was the book he wrote then which recorded Thoreau’s simple life and how he thought about nature, human being, material, government. 50 years’ later, Walden became one of Thoreau’s masterpieces, and more popular in the world. In Walden, Thoreau quoted 10 sentences from Confucian masterpiece Four Books to explain his thought, which indicates that there are some similarities between Confucianism and Thoreau’s thought. “Ren” as the core idea of Confucianism, which encourages people to pursue simple life, virtue and self-cultivation, can also be found in this great transcendentalism masterpiece. In Walden, because of the translation limitation, there were some mistakes in the quotations. Although Thoreau understood Confucianism from another point of view, these two thoughts still ha