INTRODUCTION: Emerson and the Law of Freedom (original) (raw)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude, Twelve Chapters
"Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters by Ralph Waldo Emerson Callaway, H.G. ISBN10: 0-7734-5127-7 ISBN13: 978-0-7734-5127-8 Pages: 296 Year: 2008 Description This new edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Society and Solitude reproduces the original 1870 edition—only updating nineteenth-century prose spellings. Emerson’s text is fully annotated to identify the authors and issues of concern in the twelve essays, and definitions are provided for selected words in Emerson’s impressive vocabulary. The work aims to facilitate a better understanding of Emerson’s late philosophy in relation to his sources, his development and his subsequent influence. Reviews “This book is in fact a scholarly jewel suited for a large audience of university students and the educated public in general.” – Professor Jaime Nubiola, Department of Philosophy, University of Navarra, Spain “The present edition . . . goes beyond the usual compartmentalization of Emerson as an exclusively American figure almost exclusively in the literary milieu. . . . The book shows that Emerson should be read as an important figure in nineteenth-century thought—one who had a strong impact on contemporary philosophers, authors, and artists.” – Dr. Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski, Institute of Philosophy, Opole University, Poland Table of Contents Preface Note to the Text Introduction: Emerson and the Law of Freedom I. Society and Solitude II. Civilization III. Art IV. Eloquence V. Domestic Life VI. Farming VII. Works and Days VIII. Books IX. Clubs X. Courage XI. Success XII. Old Age A Brief Emerson Chronology Bibliography Index"
“Solitude before Society: Emerson on Self-Reliance, Abolitionism, and Moral Suasion.”
Polity, 2016
Scholars have not reconciled Emerson’s anti-political individualism with his newly rediscovered abolitionism. I unite the apolitical and political Emerson by showing this separation is temporal. Solitude prefaces politics. I first explain Emerson’s solitary contemplation as imagination that reveals interpersonal obligations. Second, I show how these obligations draw the thinker back to politics, and in Emerson’s case, to abolitionism, where he advocated small conversations to encourage others to contemplation and then action. Conversation did not convert hostile slaveholders, but third, I note Emerson admired the abolitionists who attempted this moral suasion in the South at great personal risk. Their political activism exemplified self-reliance while in society.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life, A Philosophical Reading
978-0-7618-3410-6 • Hardback March 2006 • 62.99•(£39.95)978−0−7618−3411−3•PaperbackApril2006•62.99 • (£39.95) 978-0-7618-3411-3 • Paperback April 2006 • 62.99•(£39.95)978−0−7618−3411−3•PaperbackApril2006•36.99 • (£22.95) Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1860 book, The Conduct of Life is among the gems of his mature works. First published in the year of Abraham Lincoln's election as President, this work poses the questions of human freedom and fate. This new edition emphasizes Emerson's philosophy and thoughts on such issues as freedom and fate; creativity and established culture; faith, experience, and evidence; the individual, God, and the world; unity and dualism; moral law, grace, and compensation; and wealth and success. Emerson's text has been fully annotated to explain difficult words and to clarify his references. The Introduction, Notes, Bibliography, Index, and Chronology of Emerson's life help the reader understand his distinctive outlook, his contributions to philosophy, and his place in American culture and society.
Emerson's Philosophy: A Process of Becoming through Personal and Public Tragedy
2019
ed poet or writer must face in a tangible fashion an evil which threatens to make smaller the life around him, and that writers and scholars indeed do have practical, longterm obligations as citizens.” Emerson’s speech went on to describe that Christian religion and the Constitutional values of Americans were incongruent with the current state of racial affairs. Emerson chastised a man he had formerly admired, Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, in his shift from slavery’s adversary to one who pushed for the law’s passage. Emerson wrote, “It is contravened by all the sentiments. How can a law be enforced that fines pity, and imprisons charity?” His own shift came not in turning his back on slaves as Webster did, but in moving from passive observation, as a peaceful founder of a major philosophical movement, to anger: “when justice is violated,” he wrote, “anger begins.” Finally, true to his defense of moral good, Emerson responded with fury as the issue of human bondage “turn[ed] ...
Emerson and the "Pale Scholar,"
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 2017
A recurrent theme in Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings is his struggles with the problem of scholarly inaction. Commentators have given much attention to " The American Scholar " but less to his remarks about the " pale scholar. " In this paper, I focus on the latter and argue that understanding the evolving nature of Emerson's views about what counts for action could not only deepen our understanding of his philosophy and its orientation toward the conduct of life but also explain why, according to Emerson, there seems to be no reconciliation between " the theory and practice of life. " RÉSUMÉ : Le problème de l'inaction des intellectuels est un thème récurrent dans les écrits de Ralph Waldo Emerson. Les commentateurs ont accordé beaucoup d'attention à «l'intellectuel américain», mais moins à ses remarques concernant l'«intellectuel pâle». Dans cet article, je me concentre sur ce dernier point, en montrant qu'une compréhension de la manière dont évoluent les idées d'Emerson sur ce qui compte pour l'action permettrait non seulement d'approfondir notre compréhension de sa philosophie ainsi que son orientation vers la conduite de la vie, mais aussi d'expliquer pourquoi, selon Emerson, il ne semble pas y avoir de réconciliation possible entre «la théorie et la pratique de la vie».
Relentless Unfolding: Emerson's Individual
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2003
Amid its romantic excesses such as "[t]o believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,-that is genius" (Porte 2001, 121), Emersonian individualism remains a living project, one we would do well to understand more thoroughly and pursue more rigorously. To aid in this recovery, I will, in a translating repetition of Emerson's thought that engages a range of texts, offer eight theses that any successful reconstruction of individualism must embrace. 1 I am not claiming that these theses are unique to Emerson; others hold similar views. I have elected to work with Emerson, however, because his work eludes the exhausted opposition between atomistic and collectivist accounts of human flourishing. Emerson thinks in severely relational terms. I say "severely relational" because he both denies the possibility of an atomistic self and refuses to dissolve human beings into, or defer our endeavors to, the systemic activities of macrosubjectivities like culture, states, traditional communities, civil-social associations, ecosystems, or even a divinity. Because he broaches the issue of how individuals are private and public, solitary and engaged, Emerson strikes me as a salutary interlocutor for those who would rethink individualism. 1. Individualism Requires Conscious Self-Fashioning Permit me a point of stipulation and clarification. In metaphysics, we might speak of singular beings as individuals, and distinguish them from larger collectivities to which they may or may not belong. In this sense,
By rejecting his role as a minister, Emerson broke away from the Unitarian Church, which was itself already breaking from religious orthodox theologies, opening up the possibility of a secularized reading of his work. The ordinary is central for Stanley Cavell, relating Emerson to the philosophy of ordinary language of Wittgenstein and Austin, all of them sharing a common sense of existence, loss and experience of the ordinary (Cavell, 1988). Cavell places Emerson at the beginning of the American philosophy, an element too long neglected, which also seems to evacuate the religious aspects of his thinking. Yet this return to the ordinary is also shared by a literature of which Emerson is a contemporary, and which embodies "the literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life" that Emerson evokes and invokes in The American Scholar. Catherine M. Sedgwick, Lydia M. Child, Lydia Sigourney, and Eliza Buckminster Lee constitute this literature of the domestic novel, novel of the family or novel of the "Republican Motherhood" (Kerber, 1980), but it is also as liberals and religious authors that they can be understood (Buchanan, 1998), illustrating the development of a theology, Unitarian-inspired for some, within literature. I would like to understand the tensions of this literature with Emerson's work insofar as he read and knew them (Richardson, 1995) even in person, like Lydia M. Child, a friend of Margaret Fuller (Marshall, 2013). This will also raise the question of how this literature of reconciliation and Emerson attempted to respond differently to the problem of inheriting religiously and philosophically the violence of Puritanism in early nineteenth-century America.
Sovereignty of the Living Individual: Emerson and James on Politics and Religion
William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson are both committed individualists. However, in what do their individualisms consist and to what degree do they resemble each other? This essay demonstrates that James's individualism is strikingly similar to Emerson's. By taking James's own understanding of Emerson's philosophy as a touchstone, I argue that both see individualism to consist principally in self-reliance, receptivity, and vocation. Putting these two figures' understandings of individualism in comparison illuminates under-appreciated aspects of each figure, for example, the political implications of their individualism, the way that their religious individuality is politically engaged, and the importance of exemplarity to the politics and ethics of both of them.