Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American Essayist

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), who began his career as a Unitarian minister, later became a famous and well respected lecturer, essayist, and philosopher of nineteenth-century America. He played a significant role in the New England Renaissance through his writings and through his associations with the Transcendental Club, the Dial, and many other notable writers such as notably Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller (UUA 10). His stature was so great that his home soon became a kind of shrine to visiting students and aspiring writers. Emerson and the other Transcendentalists worked towards opening the Unitarians and the liberally religious to science, the Eastern religions, and a naturalistic mysticism.

Emerson preferred his views to be termed idealistic rather than transcendentalist. He felt that while transcendentalism was simply a protest against formalism and dogmatism in religion, idealism was a philosophical and spiritual movement looking toward a spiritual faith (UUA 11). Emerson was a much sought after lecturer in literary, theological and philosophical circles. He was a well read man who was much taken with the Idealist philosophy of Immanuel Kant especially as it came to him through the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. He was a great lecturer and writer who wrote several widely influential essays and poetry. He wrote many books, the first of which was titled “Nature” (1936). His later works carry the influence of Hindu scriptures and Persian poetry. Towards the closing decades of the twentieth century Emerson has been revaluated as a writer of great complexity.

His poems display tenderness, affection, and love of nature. Of special note are “Concord Hymn,” written for the completion of the Minuteman Monument in 1837; “Threnody,” which expressed his grief at the loss of his first-born son and “Brahma,” the epitome of his understanding of the Hindu scriptures (UUA 13). His own favorite was “Days,” in which he depicted time as a parade of goddesses whose gracious gifts, if not accepted, would be forever withdrawn (UUA 13). Several studies of Emerson’s poetry, notably those by Hyatt Waggoner, Harold Bloom, and Albert Gelpi, seem agreed that “Bacchus” and “Merlin” are two of the best American statements in verse of the Romantic poetic ideal.

Viewing nature as a dictionary of symbolism, Emerson read avidly in the scientific literature of his day. In Emerson’s view, as science continues step by step to verify the operation of law and purposefulness in the universe, it reveals at the same time the laws governing man’s mind, spirit, and conduct. Emerson has produced 171 sermons and several essays while he was in France during 1926-1936: natural history essays, essays on English literature, and biographies. In these he showcased his open minded thinking on theological issues and also his visionary thinking. In 1836 he wrote Nature, a treatise on American transcendentalism. Nature begins with an explicit critique of post-Hegelian historicism and of every “retrospective” attitude and a critique against forms of “paltry empiricism” such as the Humean ones. The American Scholar (1837) and Divinity School Address (1838) were two essays that acquired a great deal of recognition. They were the result of several years spent studying education, philosophy of culture and philosophical anthropology. Emerson held that the scholar must be basically an observer of reality rather than just a reader of books. The essay of 1838 drew the revolutionary picture of Jesus as teacher democratizer of divine status, one who teaches to each and all how to become those divine beings that they potentially are. Thus, according to Emerson, Jesus is essentially seen as the supreme model of the educator and Christian spirituality is an invitation to live in love without being confined to rigid institutionalized views.

In the essay “Self-Reliance” Emerson wrote about the modern concept of the ancient Socratic and Stoic credo in the individual, in the resources of the soul, and in a mind, or soul, which is at once individual and universal. This also implied the need to express “latent conviction” or thoughts that are generally ignored as insignificant. Every single thought counted. Accordingly Emerson did not follow the residual systematical purposes and relied more on this journals that contained many cardinal intuitions. These journals formed the foundation of Emerson’s philosophical work and they contain personal intuitions and observations along with quotations and translations from Goethe to Novelis, from Milton to Coleridge, from Plato to Plutarch and Plotinus, to Swedenborg, from Vedic and Classical Indian thought to Confucian thought, to Persian poets, to Trascendentalists such as Sampson Reed or his aunt, Mary Moody E.. Self-Reliance and Circles are two essays that express the most radical thesis of intellectual non-conformism (Soressi 6). Emerson postulates a theory of individuation through a self-education to abandonment. This implies a perfectionist ethics and the acceptation of forms of external inconsistency below which, however, there is the consistent rout of a character, of a personality. Emerson held a clear democratic attitude, and never worried too much about hierarchies and classes of men. Emerson felt that every person is different because each one participates in his own way of the “common-wealth” of humanity. But all are potentially equal because they can participate of this patrimony, of this common-wealth (Soressi 6)

In his essay “History”, Emerson invokes the need to join together individual life and universal history (Soressi 5). He invites us to read history, identify with the men of the past and using imagination, try to relive their lives to the point of overcoming space and time. Emerson in fact believed that the best use of history “is to enhance our estimate of the present hour” (Porte and Morris 3). He opines that as history deals with the universal theme of human life, it will provide a mean of discovering what human beings have been, what they are and what they will be. “Intellect” focuses on two aspects of Emerson’s philosophy: an emotional theory of knowing and a conception of thinking as a “pious reception”. “Compensation” and “Spiritual Laws” illustrate part of Emerson’s vision of ethics and justice, which is founded on a supposed omni-present and inviolable order of nature.

Essays Volume II was published in 1944. ‘The Poet’ presents a prophetology marked by a democratic attitude, suggesting a theory of social transformation through poetry. Emerson’s Poet is seen as a “liberating god” and the one who can realize the ideal of philosophical, scientific, and poetic revolution that is promoted in Circles. In “Experience” Emerson presents an epistemological theory that the image of human experience becomes more complicated; to the point that we become spectators of a proliferation of the criteria of knowledge, such as the moods and other aspects of reality. Representative Men (1850) is a collection of essays focusing on what should be the scope and goal of studying the works and life of ‘great men’. Great men are stimulating figures because they are representative of the potential inside each human being.

“The Conduct of Life” (1860) is a collection of essays dealing with anthropologic-philosophical themes and emphasizing a more realistic approach. Emerson calls for a life based on a culture of non-conformity and very high ethical ideals. In “Fate” Emerson studies the points of convergence between human freedom and determinism and in so doing analyzes the issue of slavery as a historical fact. In “Power”, Emerson emphasizes the significance of vital energy and the sentiment of power as a criterion of validity. Emerson extends these themes to include economic power in “Wealth”. Society and Solitude (1870) portrays an individual who is torn by society and a liberating solitude. In “Domestic Life” Emerson outlines the philosophical concept of a house and his thoughts on hospitality. The lectures he delivered in 1870 at Harvard were published under the title “Natural History of the Intellect”. In these essays Emerson does a refined poetic-psychologic exercise of analyzing different possible metaphors of mind such as the idea of the tree, passing of electricity, the image of the sea, etc. Similarly, Emerson also published in 1875, “Letters and Social Aims” containing essays such as “Poetry and Imagination”, “Quotation and Originality” and “Immortality”. “Miscellanies” published in 1878 included many historical, civil and literary addresses of Emerson.

Thus, Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the greatest integrators of art, philosophy, and religion (Carlson and Emerson xi). He was considered the leading transcendental author and critic of his time. His belief in the transforming power of creative experience had momentous consequences he could not have foreseen. Harold Bloom recently declared: “Emerson is an experiential critic and essayist, and not a transcendental philosopher” (Carlson and Emerson xi). In philosophy, he deserves recognition as a “practical idealist” in the American tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin before him and William James and John Dewey after him.

Works Cited

UUA (Unitarian Universalist Association) (2003). The Living Legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Worship Resources. 2003. Web.

Soressi, B. (2004). Ralph Waldo Emerson. Il pensiero e la solitudine. Armando Publications. Rome. 2004. Web.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1883). Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sully and Kleinteich Publishers. New York. 1883.

Carlson, W. Eric and Emerson, Waldo Ralph (1979). Emerson’s Literary Criticism (1979). University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln, NE. 1979.

Porte, Joel and Morris, Saundra (1999). The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 1999

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American Essayist

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