This study takes up Thoreau s work as an early and prophetic diagnosis of the modern crisis of relationships between the individual and society. Thus Adorno s formulation of -a melancholy of science- finds its predecessor in Thoreau s famous dictum from the early pages of Walden that we live our lives in quiet desperation. The author reads Thoreau s Journal as an attempt to refute tendencies towards the narrowing of life to being understood merely in techno-economic categories which threaten the quality of the development of both the individual and the community. Thus in...