Philosophy
Scott was a trained economist and former college professor (he had lost his position due to his socialist and pacifist beliefs, and his anti-war activism during World War I). He continued to tread the path of a social and political theorist. Helen had grown up in an economically comfortable family of Theosophists, and as a young woman had a romantic relationship with Jiddu Krishnamurti. She was trained as a musician, and also had some brief experience in the factory work world before moving into the agrarian life with Scott.
During the Vietnam War, the Nearings joined more than 400 other writers in signing a statement, published as a full page ad in the New York Post, declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the war.
Read more about this topic: Helen And Scott Nearing
Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:
“The new statement will comprise the skepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For, skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of them, just as much as must include the oldest beliefs.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The fact is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)