Abstract

This paper puts forward a threefold proposal relating to the ethics exposed by Henry Thoreau in Walden: the definition of his concept of luxury, in light of how the subject has been approached from various historical and philosophically relevant positions; the recognition of poverty as a fundamental concept for Thoreau’s ethical proposal in Walden and the aims of thoreauvian economy, and a reading of Walden as a structured text that goes from the individual requirements of human life to social and cultural necessities. These three points will be connected through the critical practice of voluntary poverty that Thoreau argues for, in the sense of a pragmatic doubt about the habits and search for the necessary elements of life.