Walden:Returning To The Authenticity Of Life

This essay is mainly about the ideal and authentic lifestyle depicted in Thoreau’s Walden. Heidegger discussed the form "authenticity" in his Being and Time. He thought that there were two kinds of human’s existence—authentic and unauthentic existence. What is unauthentic state is that Dasein is falling in the routine life. In the unauthentic lifestyle,humans,modeling others,are not themselves. Authenticity was raised to criticize the unauthenticity. In Rousseau’s A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind,he also talked about his own comprehensions on authenticity. Compared with the people in civilization, Rousseau held that the barbarians natural lifestyle was more authentic because they lived on their own real nature. The unauthentic state of living is inevitable when people came to the stage of civilization and socialization. The criticism of unauthenticity is connected with modernism and the living strait of modern people. Heidegger’s theory of authenticity is a part of his modernism-criticism. Faced with the decline of modern civilization,Rousseau proposed that we create a new society with equality and freedom. In Walden, four aspects about the criticism of unauthenticity and returning to authenticity should be taken into consideration. Firstly, Commodities, becoming the new God, dominant people’s lives. People want to lead a ideal life through possessing wealth as much as possible, misleading in the thought that wealth is just the happiness. Thoreau suggested that we pursue more free time instead of surplus wealth. The purpose of leading a simple life and seeking for more leisure is to have a elevated sates of spirit. Secondly, the relationship between modern people is superficial and transient. Everyone concerns the trivial things in their own lives,which makes they low in spirit and mind. As a result, their lives become narrow and insignificant. On the contrary, Thoreau considered that people should keep pure and lofty relationships with others by equal communications in soul and spirit. Thirdly, we modern people, relying on reason, set laws and regulations for the nature, regarding the nature as an object which can be recognized and conquered by us. However, Thoreau and the nature were on intimate terms. Lastly, there are no wonders that in modern society people lost their true-selves and live in the shadow of others’ opinions by imitating each other. Thoreau’s living in reclusion is to find necessary loneliness for facing to his self.