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. ... Read more 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.
Rick Anthony Furtak, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Colorado College, USA
Without wasting time on the tired question of whether or not Thoreau is a philosopher, Mooney's decisive arguments uncover for us the profundity and strangeness of the thinker's ideas. Mooney carefully and elegantly uncovers a Thoreau who is attentive to questions of life and loss that led him to formulate a complex ethics while rethinking the meaning of the communal. By bringing Thoreau into conversation with such thinkers as Marx and Kierkegaard, Mooney reveals challenges in Thoreau's writings that have still not been sufficiently addressed. Excursions with Thoreau is beautifully written and will be indispensable for future conversations about that writer.
Branka Arsic, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USA
This is, from my point of view, a delightful book. ... Mooney is not just interested in explicating Thoreau. The title, Excursions with Thoreau, is meant more seriously. The essays attempt not only to show us Thoreau's way of living, (or, what I called above, his being-in-the-world) but, to some degree, to initiate Mooney himself, and his readers, into that way of life. ... Mooney masterfully characterizes the complexity (and sometimes contradiction) that structure these ways of being in the world.
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
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