In their brand-new book from Princeton University Press, Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living, contemporary American philosophers John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle explore the lesser-known side of 19th-century American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Best known for the book Walden (1854), the essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849), and a lifelong commitment to the abolition of slavery, Thoreau has been criticised as somewhat of a slacker when it comes to work. Kaag and van Belle prove this claim to be untrue in Henry at Work, revealing not only the varied range of jobs at which Thoreau worked hard throughout his life (ranging from surveying to pencil-making), but also his thoughts and reflections on what work can and should be. Kaag and van Belle explore how Thoreau’s ideas can be applied to a present-day America in which many people are reconsidering their working lives in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and cover everything from manual labour to immoral work and what many of us most desire: meaningful work.

Although a book dedicated to what a 19th-century man thought about work might seem a preposterous read for a 21-year-old student, I have to admit that Henry at Work intrigued me instantly. Maybe I am a bit boring (seriously, what student in their right mind would want to read a book about work?), but in this case I shall just have to own it, because I found this book to be a surprising, interesting, and thought-provoking read.

Firstly, Kaag and van Belle do not expect much prior knowledge of Thoreau from their readers. They explain his ideas about work very clearly and succinctly to the average reader who has no particular grounding in either Thoreau’s work or philosophy in general. Thoreau’s ideas about work are very interesting, and encouraged me to think about how I felt about and approached particular work tasks (whether they be paid – like internships – or unpaid – like cleaning or washing the dishes). Kaag and van Belle also use examples from their own lives to help illustrate Thoreau’s ideas in a modern-day context – for example, the chapter titled ‘Manual Labor’ refers throughout to Kaag’s mother Becky when explaining how manual work, in some cases, can be a meaningful and meditative process. Further, Kaag and van Belle explain how we can apply Thoreau’s ideas about work to our own lives, as far as is possible within the constraints of a capitalist system of work.

It is, of course, very easy to moralise about work when one has a fairly comfortable position in life – Thoreau was a middle-class white man in America who, although poor at times, was never very poor – and Kaag and van Belle acknowledge this clearly in their ‘Preface’ to the book. Furthermore, some of the philosophical ideas about work in this book, such as the problem of sacrificing life and time doing immoral or meaningless work for money, will obviously be an issue that some people simply cannot afford to worry about. We are all just trying to survive in this world, after all, and for those who are struggling the most, philosophising over what work we should and should not be doing may not feel practical or useful. Kaag and van Belle recognise this, arguing that this is just the sort of system that Thoreau would be against. But they do what they can to offer some useful advice on how people can, if they are able to, think more deeply about what sort of work they are doing and how they are spending their time on this earth.

Overall, while there are some acknowledged limits to how far Thoreau’s ideas can be taken on board in modern capitalist societies, Henry at Work is a fascinating and thought-provoking read on how we can attempt to make our work more meaningful and ethical, in order to ‘make good’ on our lives. As Kaag and van Belle say in the book, we spend a lot of our life at work: if we can, we ought to figure out to what purpose and end we are doing such work.

Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living will be published in the UK on 8th August 2023.

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