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A brief reading of Thoreau’s comments leaves readers initially uncertain about his ethical position. For example, he unambiguously offers a pseudo-hedonistic sentiment in “Natural History of Massachusetts”: “Surely joy is the condition of life” (Excursions 5). In his first letter to his friend Harrison G. O. Blake in 1848, Thoreau offers the following advice clearly limiting the extent and importance of morality: “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good—be good for something.—All fables indeed have their morals, but the innocent enjoy the story” (Correspondence, Volume 1 362). There is something in morality, if taken too seriously, that can diminish life, which means Thoreau establishes a tension between joyous living and a purely moral life. A similar anti-moral sentiment is found in A Week that expresses the limits of one’s conscience: “The conscience really does not, and ought not to, monopolize the whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part” (74). Against a Kantian appraisal of morality that foregrounds the moral law in all we do, Thoreau foregrounds how life exceeds morality, a dominating conscience, and an abstract goodness divorced from content or contexts.

What we get in Walden, however, is a very pragmatic assessment for being moral, which is drawn from his well-known hesitation to eat meat: “Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary” (217). The important part of this quotation is the final conditional pronouncement, “if it were necessary.” Cross referencing this sentence with A Week, Thoreau clearly judges the eating of animal flesh problematic: “The carcasses of some poor squirrels, however, the same that frisked so merrily in the morning, which we had skinned and embowelled for our dinner, we abandoned in disgust, with tardy humanity, as too wretched a resource for any but starving men” (224). Those who come to humanity early see that killing such animals is less than a moral necessity; it is a disgusting act. When necessity demands it, when survival is the criterion, however, the morality of eating animal flesh changes. Changing conditions may alter the ethical demands we face, so a type of situational ethics or a pragmatic moral posture appears to guide Thoreau.

A better way to frame his ethics, however, is to concentrate on the ever-changing nature of the inward condition of human beings and their dynamic relationships with the world, both human and nonhuman. As Mooney indicates, one of Thoreau’s concerns is the wildness within every human being (“Thoreau’s Wild Ethics” 107-08). In a journal entry for August 19, 1851, Thoreau writes, “The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind as the astronomer watches the aspects of the heavens . . . A meteorological journal of the mind” (Journal 3 377). This comparison between the mind and the skies offer a clear indication of the ceaselessly changing nature of one’s emotions and fluctuating moods. Part of the ethical task is to be aware of these shifts, meteorological alterations of the mind that affect life and relationships. In other words, any ethical position that seeks to impose stability and necessity on human life will encounter problems as the internal world, like nature, is filled with fluctuations. Ethics, then, needs to take account of this wildness within, or this undomesticated nature of our inner world.

Thoreau’s emphasis on being watchful is important, for he thought too many people lived their lives in a condition of sleep. Watchfulness and reawakening oppose inattentiveness and sleep. Thoreau tells readers, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor . . . To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts” (Walden 90). There is a perpetual newness immanent within human life that should not go unnoticed, and to live a fuller life, it needs to be one of fighting off sleep and living awakened; this will be done with an expectation of something like the renewal of dawn in life. This means fighting the habits and customs ingrained in us by society and disengaged living; it is the struggle to bring more quality to our lives through active engagement and attention to all we encounter.

The somnolent propensities of society leave people in a zombie-like state, focused on acquisitions, and in a state of desperation. In A Week, Thoreau offers a vivid picture of this condition: “All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man’s life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant” (132). The slow accumulation of custom, its rules, and expectations leave people in a process of being buried alive; this diminishes life to such a great extent, that they are neither alive nor dead. To be buried alive and constrained by society’s customs is like being in a stagnant state where change is absent or nearly absent. The best life is one that is coursing and fresh, elevating the quality of life.

To understand this orientation in his ethics, it is important to understand Thoreau’s distrust of the market economy he was living in; instead of simple living and appreciation of one’s milieu, people were enticed to live unnecessarily complicated lives focused on the acquisition of new goods. People were enticed to take on more activities and possessions than was necessary, and Thoreau openly criticizes this through his emphasis on simple living.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. (Walden 91)

Society is like a dangerous ocean that is likely to submerge one’s life, taking the person down to the bottom of the ocean. Part of the difficulty is being able to calculate the simplest life against the impositions of society. Not only is life about paying attention, keeping awake amid the sleep-inducing qualities of society, and allowing one’s life to remain fresh, but Thoreau makes it clear that life has to be a strategic avoidance of the enticements and dangers of society.

Instead of falling into the trap of a consumer culture and the hoarding of unneeded products, Thoreau urges people to live as simply as possible, which in his words is similar to mathematical reductions: “I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest man thinks he must attend to in a day. When a mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real” (Thoreau, Dean, and Blake 36). The crucial ethical task, the crucial part of living a quality life, is the discernment of the real and the necessary, while recognizing and avoiding what is inauthentic and unnecessary.

Mooney rightly describes this orientation as a wild ethic and an ethic of preservative care (“Thoreau’s Wild Ethics”). From his essay “Walking” comes Thoreau’s most ardent statement about preserving wildness, a wildness present in the world around us and within us: “. . . and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world” (Excursions 202). This wildness is not simply the trees and untamed aspects of the forest; there is a common wildness within the natural world and humanity, and ideally, society would integrate and nurture this wildness in the community:

Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees. (202-04)

Within each person is a force with great potential that allows for an infinite demand on life, expectations that life will continue to grow and be fresh. This wildness is not focused satisfied with how things are, letting life stagnate; as Thoreau saw it, life, the woods, and all that is worthy of respect do not settle into a state of stagnant equilibrium. Instead, as with the natural world and its flowing, human life should be flowing and changing, too.

Wildness is a characteristic that people should have within themselves, and they should preserve this wild quality in their actions, thoughts, and speech. Jane Bennett aptly summarizes this quality: “. . . the Wild, that which disturbs and confounds settled projects, techniques, and myths . . . . the Wild speaks to the idea that there always remains a surplus that escapes our categories and organizational practices, even as it is generated by them” (xxvii). In the end, Thoreau’s ethic of preservative care—preserving wildness and the wild in all we encounter—entails a countercultural propensity, a disobedient way of life.