A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

by William B. Irvine

Like the Stoics, Thoreau was interested in developing a philosophy of life. According to the Thoreau scholar Robert D. Richardson, “His was always the practical question, how best can I live my daily life?,” and his life itself can best be understood, says Richardson, as “one long uninterrupted attempt to work out the practical concrete meaning of the stoic idea that the laws which rule nature rule men as well.”7 Thoreau went to Walden Pond to conduct his famous two-year experiment in simple living in large part so that he could refine his philosophy of life and thereby avoid misliving: A primary motive in going to Walden, he tells us, was his fear that he would, “when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”