Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Discussion - Self-Reliance
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First Readings of Self-Reliance
A number of people have emphasized the apparent preeminence of "self" in Self Reliance. Most recently, Patrice captures it succinctly: I think Emerson is too full of "self" and too short on "truth". I'm no fan of Whitman either for the same reason. But narcissim is more acceptable to me in a poet than in a philosopher.
I'd like to offer a couple of thoughts about this. Some have been alluded to already, but some I think are new to the discussion.
First, as others have noted, we shouldn't lose sight of the openness to changing his mind. Emerson is anything but rigid in his thinking. He is confident of today's discovery; he will be equally grateful for tomorrow's clarifying alteration.
Second, he very much believes in Truth. At various times it is described as God, Nature and The Oversoul.
However, third, he believes that for far too long people have accepted received wisdom (particularly from the pulpit) as their truth. Truth, for him, however named, is a transcendent reality which is equally accessible (indeed only accessible to individuals.
Indeed, this is why he resigned his pulpit. As someone noted, the precipitating issue was that he could no longer in good conscience offer communion since he had become convinced that Jesus did not intend it to become a ritual. His sermon about this is well worth reading and a fine demonstration that he was a man of action as well as thought. Sentences that show his courage of his convictions and could be equally appropriate to the essay we are discussing say, "It is my own objection. This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it."
It is crucial to understanding the essay however, to see that Waldo has no problem if someone else sees his/her truth differently than he does. Indeed, he articulates this well in the same sermon about communion. He says: "I have no hostility to this institution; I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither should I ever have obtruded this opinion on other people, had I not been called by my office [as a Minister:] to administer it. That is the end of my opposition, that I am not interested in it. I am content that it stand to the end of the world, if it please men and it please Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good that it produces."
Somewhere else, he makes a similar point in a more acerbic tone: "Once we had wooden chalices and golden preachers. Now we have golden chalices and wooden preachers."
Despite this, he is resolute that he will continue his search for Truth, and confident that ultimately everyone can access divinity. This is because, as Quakers put it to this day, "There is that of God in everyone."
By the time of Self Reliance, he believes that if individuals will follow his advice and become true to their own discoveries in the ways he discusses in the essay, they will find it within themselves and in others. Then, theoretically, all would find communion in a spiritual sense rather than in a hollow form.
I suppose this means that, as much as I was stimulated by Patrice's posts, in the end, I disagree with her. Emerson is about both self and truth. For him, the self is not the material self. As Mary Oliver puts it in the introduction to the Modern Library collection of his writings: "That we are spirits that have descended into our bodies, of this Emerson was sure." Transcendentalism was, in part, a response to the "Materialist" and "Sensualist" philosophers like Locke and Hume who argued that the only things that are "real" are things we can account for with our five senses. For the Idealists like Emerson, Truth was every bit as real as anything else --indeed, more real-- and the aim of the "self" is to embody this "truth."
Needless to say, this was not a philosophy that could take root in modernizing America. However, I think the integrity and independence of thought and, dare I say it, the self-reliance and confidence of the thinker have lasting resonance as being characteristically American and a lasting example for us all.
I'd like to offer a couple of thoughts about this. Some have been alluded to already, but some I think are new to the discussion.
First, as others have noted, we shouldn't lose sight of the openness to changing his mind. Emerson is anything but rigid in his thinking. He is confident of today's discovery; he will be equally grateful for tomorrow's clarifying alteration.
Second, he very much believes in Truth. At various times it is described as God, Nature and The Oversoul.
However, third, he believes that for far too long people have accepted received wisdom (particularly from the pulpit) as their truth. Truth, for him, however named, is a transcendent reality which is equally accessible (indeed only accessible to individuals.
Indeed, this is why he resigned his pulpit. As someone noted, the precipitating issue was that he could no longer in good conscience offer communion since he had become convinced that Jesus did not intend it to become a ritual. His sermon about this is well worth reading and a fine demonstration that he was a man of action as well as thought. Sentences that show his courage of his convictions and could be equally appropriate to the essay we are discussing say, "It is my own objection. This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it."
It is crucial to understanding the essay however, to see that Waldo has no problem if someone else sees his/her truth differently than he does. Indeed, he articulates this well in the same sermon about communion. He says: "I have no hostility to this institution; I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither should I ever have obtruded this opinion on other people, had I not been called by my office [as a Minister:] to administer it. That is the end of my opposition, that I am not interested in it. I am content that it stand to the end of the world, if it please men and it please Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good that it produces."
Somewhere else, he makes a similar point in a more acerbic tone: "Once we had wooden chalices and golden preachers. Now we have golden chalices and wooden preachers."
Despite this, he is resolute that he will continue his search for Truth, and confident that ultimately everyone can access divinity. This is because, as Quakers put it to this day, "There is that of God in everyone."
By the time of Self Reliance, he believes that if individuals will follow his advice and become true to their own discoveries in the ways he discusses in the essay, they will find it within themselves and in others. Then, theoretically, all would find communion in a spiritual sense rather than in a hollow form.
I suppose this means that, as much as I was stimulated by Patrice's posts, in the end, I disagree with her. Emerson is about both self and truth. For him, the self is not the material self. As Mary Oliver puts it in the introduction to the Modern Library collection of his writings: "That we are spirits that have descended into our bodies, of this Emerson was sure." Transcendentalism was, in part, a response to the "Materialist" and "Sensualist" philosophers like Locke and Hume who argued that the only things that are "real" are things we can account for with our five senses. For the Idealists like Emerson, Truth was every bit as real as anything else --indeed, more real-- and the aim of the "self" is to embody this "truth."
Needless to say, this was not a philosophy that could take root in modernizing America. However, I think the integrity and independence of thought and, dare I say it, the self-reliance and confidence of the thinker have lasting resonance as being characteristically American and a lasting example for us all.
Patrice, you are luring me out of my safety zone, which is more history than philosophy, so I should defer to others here. Nonetheless, I would say Emerson was deeply influenced by Plato and the NeoPlatonists.
An excerpt from The Idealist relates to your comment earlier about poets and philosophers:
Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. But the philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. "The problem of philosophy," according to Plato, "is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute." It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. That law, when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula.
And from a chapter in Representative Men on Plato:
Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,- at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories. No wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his posterity and are tinged with his mind. How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men,- Platonists! ... Calvinism is in his Phaedo: Christianity is in it. Mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in its hand-book of morals, the Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him. Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts. ...An Englishman reads and says, "how English!" a German- "how Teutonic!" an Italian- "how Roman and how Greek!" As they say that Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that every body felt related to her, so Plato seems to a reader in New England an American genius. His broad humanity transcends all sectional lines.
Emerson was widely read. However, it is crucial to understand that he insisted on reading as a creative act: to do no more than absorb or reiterate someone else's thoughts was useless. As he put it himself (with much more vividness than the citations above):
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.
An excerpt from The Idealist relates to your comment earlier about poets and philosophers:
Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. But the philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. "The problem of philosophy," according to Plato, "is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute." It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. That law, when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula.
And from a chapter in Representative Men on Plato:
Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,- at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories. No wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his posterity and are tinged with his mind. How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men,- Platonists! ... Calvinism is in his Phaedo: Christianity is in it. Mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in its hand-book of morals, the Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him. Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts. ...An Englishman reads and says, "how English!" a German- "how Teutonic!" an Italian- "how Roman and how Greek!" As they say that Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that every body felt related to her, so Plato seems to a reader in New England an American genius. His broad humanity transcends all sectional lines.
Emerson was widely read. However, it is crucial to understand that he insisted on reading as a creative act: to do no more than absorb or reiterate someone else's thoughts was useless. As he put it himself (with much more vividness than the citations above):
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.
Patrice wrote: "His acceptance of contradictions bothered me too. But now that I can place him with Montaigne I think I understand that what he's supporting is skepticism. ..."Good post, Patrice. Though I'm not sure it's really skepticism he's supporting. Skepticism, it seems to me, says that we should look at the status quo and decide whether or not we find it justified. But Emerson doesn't seem even to say that. He seems to say "reject conformity period." I don't see that as a skeptical approach.
For instance, DQ put all of his faith in chivalry. As far as I could tell, he did not question this faith. He was totally consistent in his beliefs. When facts conflicted with his beliefs he dismissed the facts and held to the beliefs. I think what Emerson might be saying (I'm not sure of this however) is that we have to pay attention to the discrepancies.
DQ is interesting here because he was consistently nonconformist. Aren't we on a slippery slope, or perhaps in an endless circle, here? Emerson says reject consistency. But if he says that universally, then he is asking us to be consistent in rejecting consistency, which becomes itself a form of consistency.
That's a good first step, but isn't the goal to eventually come to a consistent idea? The inconsistencies must be explored, it seems to me, not accepted. Otherwise what's the point? Where's the knowledge? What do we have to go on?
Precisely. Descartes and his "doubt everything" principle notwithstanding, we need to have solid ground to work from, and we need to have it consistent. We need to be assured, for a very simplistic example, that four plus four will be eight (assuming a base ten system) every time. We can't go back and be skeptical about the multiplication tables every time somebody tries to calculate how much change we should get from our purchase.
That's where I think his "foolish" becomes so important. We need consistency, we need conformity, in order to function as humans within a human society. But there are also times when we need to challenge, to question. And in fact all of us here understand this, or else we wouldn't be reading these books and engaging in these discussions. But we need to be discerning about what aspects of our lives we need to be consistent and conforming in (I sure hope that you are all consistent in conforming with the rule to stop at the stop signs every time when you're driving in my town!) and what aspects of our lives we need to be willing to challenge the conformity and question consistency (should I just keep on buying fast food in polystyrene containers consistently while the landfills keep choking on it?)
When Emerson appears to challenge all conformity and consistency, that's where I think he is not only wrong but irresponsible. But when he demands that we challenge foolish consistency, then I think he's right on.
Which, of course, begs the question, how do we know which consistency is empowering and which is foolish!
Excellent post (#77), Zeke. I think you make Emerson's point a lot better than he did in the essay!
Everyman asks: how do we know which consistency is empowering and which is foolish!
That's easy. Mine is empowering and yours, if it disagrees with mine, is foolish!
That's easy. Mine is empowering and yours, if it disagrees with mine, is foolish!
Patrice wrote: "thanks for that Zeke!What it brings to mind is Plato's question "Can virtue be taught?" The answer, is no, it can only be learned by the individual. "
It's a bit off topic, but do you see that as Socrates's or Plato's belief, Patrice?
Or maybe I should hold that question until I schedule the Meno for an interim read. :)
Zeke quoted Emerson: "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm. "Which is why we here don't just read and slavishly believe the authors we read; we think about them and use them and each other as inspirations to find and refine our own beliefs and values. Self-reliance based on a strong platform of critical examination.
Patrice says she is struggling and frustrated trying to come to terms with Emerson--which is not the same thing as endorsing his views. If you are up for reading a bit more, I would suggest my two favorite pieces of his writing. I think they are more accessible than his essays, and together they provide insight into his biography.
They are The American Scholar, in which he takes the academy to task, and his Divinity School Address at Harvard, where he was invited by the graduates and scandalized the faculty.
They are The American Scholar, in which he takes the academy to task, and his Divinity School Address at Harvard, where he was invited by the graduates and scandalized the faculty.
Zeke wrote: "Everyman asks: how do we know which consistency is empowering and which is foolish!That's easy. Mine is empowering and yours, if it disagrees with mine, is foolish!"
You're exactly right, except that you have mine and yours inverted.
Everyman wrote: "Excellent post (#77), Zeke. I think you make Emerson's point a lot better than he did in the essay!"=========================
Indeed. It was a pleasure to read your post.
#80 by Everyman: Precisely. Descartes and his "doubt everything" principle notwithstanding, we need to have solid ground to work from, and we need to have it consistent. We need to be assured, for a very simplistic example, that four plus four will be eight (assuming a base ten system) every time. We can't go back and be skeptical about the multiplication tables every time somebody tries to calculate how much change we should get from our purchase. That's where I think his "foolish" becomes so important. We need consistency, we need conformity, in order to function as humans within a human society. But there are also times when we need to challenge, to question
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I'm currently reading Travels with Charley by Steinbeck. In it he notes a theory that I've read about before. He wrote, "everything in the world must have design or the human mind rejects it.
This is probably a huge stretch, but I wonder if Emerson understood this intuitively and, in part, that is what he means by consistency. The mind needs to see a pattern or connection to something else in order to make sense of it. Could Emerson be saying fight against this ingrained reaction in ourselves? Be cognizant of this tendency. Seek new patterns. Break the mold. Dare to see things in a new way.
Patrice wrote: Kinga, I was just talking to my husband about what you said, what your view is of America vs. Europe. He was born in France. I think what you said was very interesting, a European's view of America. Americans, I think are highly critical of America. My husband understood what you were saying and said that Americans don't understand what they have.I agree, Patrice and Kinga. I think we Americans take our view of ourselves from the American media, and I think that is very one-sided and negative. Think of how many people from all over the world would love to be here, some even to the extent of risking their lives to come illegally.
# 79 Zeke wrote: "Emerson was widely read. However, it is crucial to understand that he insisted on reading as a creative act: to do no more than absorb or reiterate someone else's thoughts was useless.."-------------------------------
Thanks for writing this. As soon as I read it helped to clarify one of the lines I was having trouble understanding. I looked up the words for further clarification, but it didn't help. The dictionary had: begging and a person who seeks favor by flattering people.
"Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic."
Patrice wrote: "thanks for that Zeke!What it brings to mind is Plato's question "Can virtue be taught?" The answer, is no, it can only be learned by the individual. Am I understanding you correctly? Is that w..."
This goes to the heart of the problem, for me anyway. Virtue cannot be taught because virtue cannot be defined -- definition is a problem that runs through most of the dialogues. (And Meno would be a great interim reading, especially if the leader had once been a student of Jacob Klein!)
Emerson is opening a philosophical can of worms here, and I have to wonder why he is doing this. It's such an obviously thorny problem. The more that I think about the essay and the era in which he lived, I think there is a subtext to this essay and I have to wonder if what he was really talking about was the institution of slavery. I haven't read the rest of the essays in this series, but after reading that he was an ardent and active abolitionist I wouldn't be surprised if they all pointed to this issue in one way or another.
Thomas wrote: "Emerson is opening a philosophical can of worms here, and I have to wonder why he is doing this. It's such an obviously thorny problem. The more that I think about the essay and the era in which he lived, I think there is a subtext to this essay and I have to wonder if what he was really talking about was the institution of slavery. I haven't read the rest of the essays in this series, but after reading that he was an ardent and active abolitionist I wouldn't be surprised if they all pointed to this issue in one way or another. "I could see this. Slavery as an institution relied on society's tendency to maintain the status quo. All of the proslavery arguments were frankly pretty ridiculous but they persisted because generations didn't question it they just went along. (I know that there were some who didn't 'just go along') Emerson's ideas of questioning history and society would probably have dovetailed nicely with the abolition movement.
I do think though that it's applicable to any social movement or change.
I think Emerson is going beyond the issue of slavery. Conformity to conventional expressions of virtue gives us an excuse to ignore the evil inside us. Emerson even uses abolition as an example: “If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.'”
Having finished the essay now, I also view his “uncharitable” comments in a bit of a softer light. I think he is saying that virtues like social charity are not wrong; it is just wrong to focus on these things if you have not used your own mind to establish a set of well-considered moral standards.
I need to re-read this essay. I may change my mind yet again.
Emerson’s relationship to the abolitionists –and, indeed to the women’s movement—was a bit more fraught than we might wish. Because he had high status as a public intellectual –hard for us to even imagine in our time where cable “pundits” dominate discourse—reformers were frustrated by his reluctance to speak sooner and more forcefully in support of liberal ideas that he clearly endorsed privately. There were a number of reasons why his journey unfolded as it did and they illustrate well the tensions within the transcendental movement during the mid nineteenth century.
Len Gougeon, a scholar at the University of Scranton, traces Emerson’s development well in his book, Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery and Reform. His conclusion: Throughout his lifetime Emerson never wavered from his commitment to clearly defined principles of human liberty, equality, and equal rights. The only doubts he ever felt in the matter concerned how he might best make his contribution to the cause. He did not wish to waste his energies in unproductive enterprises for which he was not fit. Also, he was always convinced, radical that he was, that American society could only be reformed by striking at the roots of social evil rather than simply pruning an occasional branch. For Emerson, the major cause of America’s moral malaise was its gross materialism—the general tendency to place the value of things above people—and slavery was the epitome of this corrupt philosophy.
I will try to summarize my understanding of the dialectical tension within the movement through a series of contrasts. Generally, Emerson’s instinctive tendency is closer to the first statement; the views to which he ultimately was drawn (as in his support of John Brown) are stated in the second. Collectively, they shed light not only on Emerson’s development, but on the movement’s history.
An optimistic belief that the world naturally progresses towards good vs. evil must be constrained.
Self improvement is the task of individuals vs. collective organization for improvement
Antipathy towards single issue zealots vs. admiration for individuals of courage and commitment
Fate determines destiny vs. Great men move history
The redeeming influence of culture vs. the need for political action
Moral suasion (the “God-way” of attacking evil) vs. legislative fiat (the “man-way”)
Generalized philosophical/poetic expression vs. directly addressing social concerns of the moment
The reasonable and refined discourse of the Lyceum vs. the rough and tumble of the soapbox
Truth vs. cant. (“They call it otto of rose and lavender. I call it bilge water.”)
Passive resistance vs. war.
Concord was indeed a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment—to the dismay of many Massachusetts businessmen. However, it was also largely insulated from direct exposure to the horrors of slavery. It was only with passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which in effect forced slavery into the free-states by requiring them to capture and return fleeing black people, that the synthesis moved more towards the right side of my list of competing values. The matter comes to a head for the Concordians in May of 1854 with the imprisonment of Anthony Burns by federal marshals in Boston. A crowd marched on the prison in an attempt to protest and free him. One of my favorite images in history is of the gentle, eccentric philosopher-educator A. Bronson Alcott stalking into the building only to discover he is confronted by armed men aiming their guns at him—and that no one has followed him inside!
In any event, on 25 January, 1855 at Tremont Temple in Boston, Emerson delivered a well received, but never published address to a packed auditorium in which he explicitly cites slavery as only one aspect of the larger malaise affecting America. At this point he is still arguing the “inefficiency” of the “man-way” of attacking evil.
The events that finally pushed Emerson into militancy were those of the violence in “Bleeding Kansas,” from which emerged John Brown. The infatuation of the transcendentalists with Brown is a fascinating subject. While, today, we may view him as a violent extremist, he captivated Concord (on two visits) as the epitome of a combination of Idealist and Hero. After Brown’s capture and sentence to execution, Thoreau delivered his well known A Plea for Captain John Brown, and Emerson also spoke out in support of him, even going so far to compare his martyrdom to that of Christ on the cross.
I apologize for the long post, but thought some of these thoughts might shed light on people’s reading of Self-Reliance. I hope it paints a portrait of good, sincere man genuinely thinking (philosophizing) about a moral issue. It is easy for us today to assume that the Civil War was inevitable and just. However, I believe that any serious study of its origins, the consequences of its carnage, the defeat of reconstruction in the south, and the second class citizenship of blacks well into the twentieth century must force us into moral reflection as well.
For anyone interested in Emerson’s more explicit words about racism and emancipation, I would recommend the following:
Emerson’s 1838 letter to President Van Buren regarding the removal of the Cherokee Indians. It can be found at this link: http://www.rwe.org/index.php?option=c...
An excerpt: In speaking thus the sentiments of my neighbors and my own, perhaps I overstep the bounds of decorum. But would it not be a higher indecorum coldly to argue a matter like this? We only state the fact that a crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude, -a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country ? for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy ; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.
His 1844 address Emancipation in the British West Indies.
His 1854 address in New York called The Fugitive Slave Law.
I will close this long post with the first and last sentences of that 1854 speech. I think they summarize the journey I have tried to describe here.
“I do not often speak to public questions—they are odious and hurtful, and it seems like meddling or leaving your work.”
“…I hope we have come to a belief that there is a divine Providence in the world, which will not save us but through our own cooperation.”
Len Gougeon, a scholar at the University of Scranton, traces Emerson’s development well in his book, Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery and Reform. His conclusion: Throughout his lifetime Emerson never wavered from his commitment to clearly defined principles of human liberty, equality, and equal rights. The only doubts he ever felt in the matter concerned how he might best make his contribution to the cause. He did not wish to waste his energies in unproductive enterprises for which he was not fit. Also, he was always convinced, radical that he was, that American society could only be reformed by striking at the roots of social evil rather than simply pruning an occasional branch. For Emerson, the major cause of America’s moral malaise was its gross materialism—the general tendency to place the value of things above people—and slavery was the epitome of this corrupt philosophy.
I will try to summarize my understanding of the dialectical tension within the movement through a series of contrasts. Generally, Emerson’s instinctive tendency is closer to the first statement; the views to which he ultimately was drawn (as in his support of John Brown) are stated in the second. Collectively, they shed light not only on Emerson’s development, but on the movement’s history.
An optimistic belief that the world naturally progresses towards good vs. evil must be constrained.
Self improvement is the task of individuals vs. collective organization for improvement
Antipathy towards single issue zealots vs. admiration for individuals of courage and commitment
Fate determines destiny vs. Great men move history
The redeeming influence of culture vs. the need for political action
Moral suasion (the “God-way” of attacking evil) vs. legislative fiat (the “man-way”)
Generalized philosophical/poetic expression vs. directly addressing social concerns of the moment
The reasonable and refined discourse of the Lyceum vs. the rough and tumble of the soapbox
Truth vs. cant. (“They call it otto of rose and lavender. I call it bilge water.”)
Passive resistance vs. war.
Concord was indeed a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment—to the dismay of many Massachusetts businessmen. However, it was also largely insulated from direct exposure to the horrors of slavery. It was only with passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which in effect forced slavery into the free-states by requiring them to capture and return fleeing black people, that the synthesis moved more towards the right side of my list of competing values. The matter comes to a head for the Concordians in May of 1854 with the imprisonment of Anthony Burns by federal marshals in Boston. A crowd marched on the prison in an attempt to protest and free him. One of my favorite images in history is of the gentle, eccentric philosopher-educator A. Bronson Alcott stalking into the building only to discover he is confronted by armed men aiming their guns at him—and that no one has followed him inside!
In any event, on 25 January, 1855 at Tremont Temple in Boston, Emerson delivered a well received, but never published address to a packed auditorium in which he explicitly cites slavery as only one aspect of the larger malaise affecting America. At this point he is still arguing the “inefficiency” of the “man-way” of attacking evil.
The events that finally pushed Emerson into militancy were those of the violence in “Bleeding Kansas,” from which emerged John Brown. The infatuation of the transcendentalists with Brown is a fascinating subject. While, today, we may view him as a violent extremist, he captivated Concord (on two visits) as the epitome of a combination of Idealist and Hero. After Brown’s capture and sentence to execution, Thoreau delivered his well known A Plea for Captain John Brown, and Emerson also spoke out in support of him, even going so far to compare his martyrdom to that of Christ on the cross.
I apologize for the long post, but thought some of these thoughts might shed light on people’s reading of Self-Reliance. I hope it paints a portrait of good, sincere man genuinely thinking (philosophizing) about a moral issue. It is easy for us today to assume that the Civil War was inevitable and just. However, I believe that any serious study of its origins, the consequences of its carnage, the defeat of reconstruction in the south, and the second class citizenship of blacks well into the twentieth century must force us into moral reflection as well.
For anyone interested in Emerson’s more explicit words about racism and emancipation, I would recommend the following:
Emerson’s 1838 letter to President Van Buren regarding the removal of the Cherokee Indians. It can be found at this link: http://www.rwe.org/index.php?option=c...
An excerpt: In speaking thus the sentiments of my neighbors and my own, perhaps I overstep the bounds of decorum. But would it not be a higher indecorum coldly to argue a matter like this? We only state the fact that a crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude, -a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country ? for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy ; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.
His 1844 address Emancipation in the British West Indies.
His 1854 address in New York called The Fugitive Slave Law.
I will close this long post with the first and last sentences of that 1854 speech. I think they summarize the journey I have tried to describe here.
“I do not often speak to public questions—they are odious and hurtful, and it seems like meddling or leaving your work.”
“…I hope we have come to a belief that there is a divine Providence in the world, which will not save us but through our own cooperation.”
Zeke wrote: "Emerson’s relationship to the abolitionists –and, indeed to the women’s movement—was a bit more fraught than we might wish. Because he had high status as a public intellectual –hard for us to even ..."Thanks Zeke. Great post!
Zeke, VERY much enjoyed the post. Thank you.
Alias Reader wrote: "I'm currently reading Travels with Charley by Steinbeck. In it he notes a theory that I've read about before. He wrote, "everything in the world must have design or the human mind rejects it.This is probably a huge stretch, but I wonder if Emerson understood this intuitively and, in part, that is what he means by consistency. The mind needs to see a pattern or connection to something else in order to make sense of it. Could Emerson be saying fight against this ingrained reaction in ourselves? Be cognizant of this tendency. Seek new patterns. Break the mold. Dare to see things in a new way."
But doesn't even nonconformity have a design? I remember being terribly amused back in the 60s with the hippies who claimed to rebel against all authority and conformity and to be free to be themselves (very Emersonian!), but who would up being very conformist in their nonconformity.
Thomas wrote: "The more that I think about the essay and the era in which he lived, I think there is a subtext to this essay and I have to wonder if what he was really talking about was the institution of slavery."That's an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me. But in another way, isn't he really talking about slavery of the mind? That our minds are enslaved in tradition, and we need to break free of that?
As I keep rereading passages, and reading all the fantastic posts here, I wonder whether Emerson isn't really doing a Cervantes here -- presenting almost a caricature of what he is really getting at. Clearly he doesn't mean us to be totally nonconforming in every way (even were it possible, which it isn't), but he seems to me to overstate his case so extremely because who would listen if he merely said what I think he means -- be willing to think outside the box from time to time.
Patrice wrote: "I would not want Charles Manson to read this essay. "I did a LOL at this comment -- and then I did a double take and realized that you are indeed on to something. Nonconformist thinking can be enormously dangerous to other people. What if your mind does tell you to be a Columbine killer -- is Emerson saying that's what you should do?
There has to be an underlying ground of virtue (which in the Greek term arete, normally translated virtue, btw, has a quite different meaning from the English, which we will have to tackle if we decide to read the Meno) to Emersonian nonconformism (indeed, to all the transcendentalists).
Dawn wrote: "I need to re-read this essay. I may change my mind yet again."Isn't that pretty much the definition of a great book -- one that makes you want to re-read it because you may change your mind again?
And isn't it both terribly hard and terribly important to be willing to challenge our established thinking (which is, after all, what Emerson is really asking us to do, isn't it?)
Zeke wrote: "I apologize for the long post [#97:], but thought some of these thoughts might shed light on people’s reading of Self-Reliance. "Heavens, Zeke, why would you even think about apologizing for such an informative and insightful post?
When he says, as you quote, “I do not often speak to public questions—they are odious and hurtful, and it seems like meddling or leaving your work,” I can't help contrasting him with Socrates, who very much meddled in public questions and was indeed seen by many as odious and hurtful, but who like Emerson has the power to make people change their way of thinking about the ideas they have taken for granted.
And I think our Patrice's Charles Manson concern is addressed by the passage you quote where he says "I hope we have come to a belief that there is a divine Providence in the world, which will not save us but through our own cooperation." He seems to be saying that our thinking should be nonconformist relative to human thinking of the past, but totally conformist in trying to understand and adhere to the principles of the divine Providence.
Zeke wrote: "Emerson’s relationship to the abolitionists –and, indeed to the women’s movement—was a bit more fraught than we might wish. Because he had high status as a public intellectual –hard for us to even ..."Thanks Zeke -- this is extremely helpful. While reading this essay I couldn't help but think of Lincoln's initial reluctance to support abolition, even though it was something he believed in personally. I expect many Americans felt the same way at the time, especially in the North -- slavery was a moral evil, but to extirpate it would simply be too expensive in social and economic terms. Emerson seems to be talking to those people, although I grant that he is doing it on broader terms.
Everyman wrote: I wonder whether Emerson isn't really doing a Cervantes here -- presenting almost a caricature of what he is really getting at. Clearly he doesn't mean us to be totally nonconforming in every way..."This is right, I think, and it's exactly why I find myself looking for a subtext. the caricatures and broad strokes Cervantes uses sends us scurrying around, wondering "what is he really talking about, where is the 'hidden' message? Is he criticizing the Church, Christianity, the Crusades, or just simply chivalric literature?"
It's easy enough to take Emerson literally, but the broad philosophical treatment he employs has the same effect for me -- my tendency is to think he's talking around something that for some reason he doesn't want to treat specifically. Which doesn't mean that he is... it just makes me a little suspicious.
I appreciate the kind words and the warm welcome to the group from Everyman and Everyone. I really owe an introduction post, and will try to make one soon. It's just by chance that this interim reading comes from an area of my reading concentration: 19th century American history and culture. I can assure you that when we get into other books --like Les Miserables-- my posts will be shorter and I will probably be seeking lots of guidance rather than pontificating.
No. On second thought. I will probably pontificate even if I don't know what I am talking about!
Thanks again for this group and the welcome. I am about 300 pages into Les Miz and looking forward to the conversation.
No. On second thought. I will probably pontificate even if I don't know what I am talking about!
Thanks again for this group and the welcome. I am about 300 pages into Les Miz and looking forward to the conversation.
Everyman post #101 wrote: But doesn't even nonconformity have a design? I remember being terribly amused back in the 60s with the hippies who claimed to rebel against all authority and conformity and to be free to be themselves (very Emersonian!), but who would up being very conformist in their nonconformity.."
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:) Perhaps, if we do something just for the sake of being non-conformist. That would be a pattern and a goal in itself. But if one was non-conformist in order to be able to think outside the box, than that is different. The goal is different. One has to deliberately fight the impulse that our brain was evidently wired with to seek out patterns, and try to see things differently. Even if we are doing that by design, we will find ourselves on a new and uncharted path.
Patrice wrote: "I've been thinking about "divine providence" all day. I suppose since Emerson was immersed in the concept he took it for granted. But what would that mean today? Jim Jones and his followers in J..."In the 1700’s the states of CT, MA, NH, RI were regarded as dominant in Congregational faith with as many as ½ to ¾ attending. From 1820 to 1850 the following denominations expanded into the 13 colonies: Episcopal, Unitarian, Methodist, Universalist and Mormons.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.a...
Regarding “Divine Providence” aren’t all denominations in Christianity based on divine providence? The purpose of divine providence is to accomplish the will of God. If God was not in control of all things then he is not sovereign, and if he’s not sovereign then he’s not God.
Emerson was trained as a Unitarian minister. The Unitarian church differs from other Christian faiths in that they don’t believe in the trinity of God and instead see Jesus as a prophet.
I think that most Christians believe in the trinity of God. If God had only one personality he could be accused of selfishness and isolation. But since he always existed in 3 personalities, each has always yielded to the others providing a model of love and relationship. God did not create love, he is love. God did not invent relationship; he has always been in relationship. Relationship is his greatest desire and that is why he created man (and woman after he saw that man “alone” was not in his image.)
When I first read Self-Reliance it bothered me that Emerson was so focused on self. In Christianity the first sin is not the Fall of Man but the pride of arch-angel Lucifer. He didn’t want to put God in the center of his life and serve him. He wanted to be the center of his own life and have others serve him.
Emerson saw God as a single deity, and when he became discouraged with the church, he stated in The Lord’s Supper -
I am so much a Unitarian as this: that I believe the human mind cannot admit but one God, and that every effort to pay religious homage to more than one being, goes to take away all right ideas. I appeal, brethren, to your individual experience. In the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life, — do you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to the mind than your brother or your child.
So for him it is easier to go from “one God” to “oneself". Christians who see God as the Trinity, are focused on a loving relationship and see pride as self-centeredness.
Here's something I just read. Sounds like he could be answering Emerson."Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, page 141.
Speaking of the brain and patterns, I hope this isn't too OT. I read in the book Brain Rules that right now you are hallucinating. You are perceiving parts of this post that do not exist. The author explains that "there is a region in the eye where retinal neurons, carrying visual information, gather together to begin their journey into deep brain tissue. That gathering place is called the optic disk...there are no cells that can perceive sight in the optic disk. It is blind in that region-and so are you. It is called the blind spot. Do you ever see two black holes in your field of view that won't go away? That's what you should see. But your brain plays a trick on you. As the signals are sent to your visual cortex, the brain detects the presence of the holes and then does an extraordinary thing. It examines the visual information 360 degrees and around the spot and calculates what is most likely to be there. Then, like a paint program on a computer, it fills in the spot... It does this based on prior experience with events in your past. It gatherers up numerous assumptions, than offers them up for your perusal." ...It does this all in a blink of an eye." In some people this goes haywire and they see things that aren't there. It's called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. The people who have it know that the things they are seeing are not really there. "Sufferers, who are mentally healthy people with often significant visual loss, have vivid, complex recurrent visual hallucinations (fictive visual percepts). One characteristic of these hallucinations is that they usually are "lilliput hallucinations" (hallucinations in which the characters or objects are smaller than normal). "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_...
#103 Everyman: What if your mind does tell you to be a Columbine killer -- is Emerson saying that's what you should do? ====================
Forgive me one more time for going OT, but since you mentioned Columbine, I wanted to recommend a terrific thought provoking book titled Columbine by Dave Cullen. The author has a GoodReads page and did Q&A there recently. One of the boys who committed the horrible crime, Harris, was diagnosed as a psychopath and on meds . I don't know if such a person is in control to make a clear decision on their actions. So I don't think Emerson would apply in that case. It's a fascinating read.
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Carol wrote: "So for him it is easier to go from “one God” to “oneself". Christians who see God as the Trinity, are focused on a loving relationship and see pride as self-centeredness."
Very interesting, Carol. I hadn't thought of the religious aspect of this too much, but I looked over the "Last Supper" and it seems to be in line with what he says in Self-Reliance. Emerson has tremendous faith in the ability of individuals to intuit the divine, and he seems to think that the main obstacle to this is the interference of ritual and the "social" structure that supports it. The problem remains the same: the individual conscience versus the collective understanding. Your emphasis on relationships is right on the mark, I think. Emerson wants none of it (at least so far as it interferes with individual conscience.)
The "nonconformists" I see mostly seem to be nonconforming in exactly the same way as a lot of other people.Emerson seems to be saying that one should ignore the opinions of others. I can't agree with him, but I think one should be careful about whose opinion one pays attention too. I say, seek out people who seem wise, judicious, and careful, and consider carefully their opinions, especially when they disagree with yours.
1. Laurale quotes C.S. Lewis: But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."
I agree that this seems to capture the kind of reading Emerson is talking about and, more generally, his thoughts about community. The last sentence is very Emersonian to me. Also, in the quotation Lewis uses the metaphor of the eye. One of Emerson's most famous --and perplexing-- images is his description of himself as becoming a "transparent eyeball."
2. There has been a lot of interesting discussion about conformity and Emerson's apparent call for nonconformity. I wonder how opinions might be different if for nonconformity we substituted the word "authenticity." I believe that is really what Emerson is calling for for himself and others.
I agree that this seems to capture the kind of reading Emerson is talking about and, more generally, his thoughts about community. The last sentence is very Emersonian to me. Also, in the quotation Lewis uses the metaphor of the eye. One of Emerson's most famous --and perplexing-- images is his description of himself as becoming a "transparent eyeball."
2. There has been a lot of interesting discussion about conformity and Emerson's apparent call for nonconformity. I wonder how opinions might be different if for nonconformity we substituted the word "authenticity." I believe that is really what Emerson is calling for for himself and others.
I was reading the GoodReads quote page and thought these two fit Emerson well.Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain
This morning's Boston Globe (9/14) has a story about the last remaining house in Concord, Mass that was built by and housed a freed slave and his descendents.
For nearly a century, three generations of black residents descended from a freed slave named Caesar Robbins lived in the house. A veteran of the American Revolution, he was freed in 1780, the year that Massachusetts enacted a Declaration of Rights stating that “all men are born free and equal,’’ said Lou Sideris, chief of planning and communications at Minute Man National Historical Park.
The house is also closely associated with the abolitionist movement, and once hosted a meeting of the local Female Anti-Slavery Society.
Residents are now trying to save it from demolition.
I have visited Concord several times for conferences and to visit historic sites. It is one of those places where palpable history sits side by side with modern wealth. The Globe story captures the tension. The whole story can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/peyoym
For nearly a century, three generations of black residents descended from a freed slave named Caesar Robbins lived in the house. A veteran of the American Revolution, he was freed in 1780, the year that Massachusetts enacted a Declaration of Rights stating that “all men are born free and equal,’’ said Lou Sideris, chief of planning and communications at Minute Man National Historical Park.
The house is also closely associated with the abolitionist movement, and once hosted a meeting of the local Female Anti-Slavery Society.
Residents are now trying to save it from demolition.
I have visited Concord several times for conferences and to visit historic sites. It is one of those places where palpable history sits side by side with modern wealth. The Globe story captures the tension. The whole story can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/peyoym
Zeke wrote: "This morning's Boston Globe (9/14) has a story about the last remaining house in Concord, Mass that was built by and housed a freed slave and his descendents. For nearly a century, three generati..."
Heart-breaking. Although individuals can make donations, they need much more. I've emailed The Amistad Center for Art & Culture (a non profit organization at the museum where I volunteer) to see if they can help them in any way.
Carol: I've emailed The Amistad Center for Art & Culture (a non profit organization at the museum where I volunteer) to see if they can help them in any way.
That's really cool Carol! Let us know if anything comes of it. If you have ever visited the Old Manse, you know that the site they want to move the house to would be wonderful.
That's really cool Carol! Let us know if anything comes of it. If you have ever visited the Old Manse, you know that the site they want to move the house to would be wonderful.
I find it interesting that Emerson’s protégé, Henry David Thoreau, has not been mentioned more in this discussion. In many ways he is the exemplar of Emerson’s exhortations in Self-Reliance. This is true not just in his decision to go to Walden: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” It is also true in his decision to leave: “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”
He epitomizes Emerson’s comment in Self-Reliance: “They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so not by rambling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth.”
It is also true in his refusal to pay a poll tax that would support enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law (though Alcott had previously refused without being jailed) and in his ringing the church bell to summon the townspeople to hear his Plea for Captain John Brown when the town officials refused to do so.
Highly important, for me, was his work on the underground railroad, helping fugitive slaves make their way to freedom—sometimes using Emerson’s carriage. This was far more important and impressive than his symbolic night in prison (and his anger at having his tax paid by someone else).
The most important outcome of the civil disobedience episode was his account of it which was originally titled, Resistance to Civil Government, an essay which inspired modern resistors including Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
As a stylist, Thoreau is far superior to Emerson in my opinion, and certainly more accessible to modern readers. He writes vividly and employs good humor and punning. Indeed Everyman, Walden could be a worthy candidate for a future group-book or an essay (possibly Civil Disobedience or Life without Principle, which has been described as Thoreau's “Self Reliance”) for an Interim Read. Walden is one of those books that literate people think they know from high school or college, but which has depths one only appreciates on second (or third, or fourth) reading.
I hope this wasn’t off topic; I tried to confine myself to the self-reliance aspect of Thoreau.
He epitomizes Emerson’s comment in Self-Reliance: “They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so not by rambling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth.”
It is also true in his refusal to pay a poll tax that would support enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law (though Alcott had previously refused without being jailed) and in his ringing the church bell to summon the townspeople to hear his Plea for Captain John Brown when the town officials refused to do so.
Highly important, for me, was his work on the underground railroad, helping fugitive slaves make their way to freedom—sometimes using Emerson’s carriage. This was far more important and impressive than his symbolic night in prison (and his anger at having his tax paid by someone else).
The most important outcome of the civil disobedience episode was his account of it which was originally titled, Resistance to Civil Government, an essay which inspired modern resistors including Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
As a stylist, Thoreau is far superior to Emerson in my opinion, and certainly more accessible to modern readers. He writes vividly and employs good humor and punning. Indeed Everyman, Walden could be a worthy candidate for a future group-book or an essay (possibly Civil Disobedience or Life without Principle, which has been described as Thoreau's “Self Reliance”) for an Interim Read. Walden is one of those books that literate people think they know from high school or college, but which has depths one only appreciates on second (or third, or fourth) reading.
I hope this wasn’t off topic; I tried to confine myself to the self-reliance aspect of Thoreau.
Zeke wrote: "I find it interesting that Emerson’s protégé, Henry David Thoreau, has not been mentioned more in this discussion."Certainly Thoreau exemplified in many ways the nonconformist thinking that Emerson advocated. But do you know, Zeke, whether Emerson's principles as discussed in his essay were more inspired by Thoreau's example, or whether Thoreau was more inspired by Emerson's principles, or whether the two sort of "egged on" each other pretty much equally? I don't know, and am too lazy to look up when I can just ask you (g) whether they were about the same age and developed their principles sort of in parallel, or whether one was more the protege of the other.
As to Walden, if you want to discuss it, put it up on the bookshelf and we'll see, but personally I think it's a lot of reading for very little discussable material. It's a bit of a fraud, IMO; I've visited Thoreau's cabin site on Walden Pond, as I'm sure you have, and the idea that he was going off into some of wilderness to live simply off the land is very far from the reality. He was in and out of town, dining with his friends, having visitors. Many of the farmers who went further West in Massachusetts, New York, etc. to carve homesteads out of the true wilderness were much better examples of people living off the land in isolation than Thoreau. He just had the smarts to write about it when they didn't.
But that's just me. Others here may be more inclined to read and discuss the book it it comes up for a vote.
#127 Zeke: Walden could be a worthy candidate for a future group-book or an essay ------------------------
I enjoyed reading Walden even though as Everyman notes, Thoreau may not have been completely honest about the experience, I think it still is a worthy read for the sentiment it imparts.
I have a beautiful anniversary edition. The pictures are gorgeous and nice to meditate on as you slowly read Walden.
http://www.amazon.com/Walden-Annivers...
The relationship between Emerson and Thoreau is actually one of the more complex and intriguing ones in American literary history. Emerson was Henry’s role model, friend, mentor and patron. However, he could also be patronizing and stifling, forcing Henry to assert his independence. The “breach” hurt both of them and, like many a filial misunderstanding, was never fully reconciled.
Scholar Robert Sattelmeyer describes it as, “a long personal struggle between the two men: a struggle to be heard, to be understood, to prevail philosophically, and to realize the high and noble friendship that each aspired to but despaired of ever achieving.”
Thoreau was a senior at Harvard when he was influenced by Emerson’s early essay Nature. They knew each other before that, since Emerson had written to Harvard’s President to recommend a scholarship for Thoreau. Fourteen years older than Thoreau, Emerson was well established and the leader of the transcendentalist circle when he delivered the graduation address (The American Scholar) at Thoreau’s 1837 graduation.
Henry’s journals, which would swell through twenty four years to over two million words, were almost surely prompted by Emerson. The first entry, on Oct. 22, 1837 reads: “‘What are you doing now?’ he asked. Do you keep a journal?’ So I make my first entry today.”
As editor of the transcendentalists’ magazine The Dial, Emerson would champion Henry’s writing, but he unwittingly gave him bad advice by encouraging him to underwrite the cost of publication for his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. (This led to Thoreau’s quip in his journal in October of 1857, “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.”)
One of the reasons for going to Walden (he built his cabin on land owned by Emerson) was to work on that book. Previously, he had lived with the Emerson family, exchanging chores, and conversation with Emerson, for his room and board. He would live there again when Emerson traveled in Europe developing a close (though there is no suggestion of sexual) relationship with Emerson’s wife Lidian.
However, the stress in the relationship dates from the forties and the lack of success of A Week. Emerson seems to have been disappointed in Henry’s failure to live up to his high expectations. Noted biographer of both men, Robert Richardson, describes it thus: “Emerson felt and tried to fight what he perceived as Thoreau’s increasing, unreachable, provincial isolation and loneliness.”
For his part, Thoreau wrote: “I had tenderly cherished the flower of our friendship till one day my friend treated it as a weed. It (did not survive the shock but) drooped & withered from that hour.—A Friend avoids the subject of friendship—in conversation.—It is a very sacred relation which is not liable to a vulgar difference.”
Efforts at rapprochement never seem to work when two people do love each other but cannot communicate. How sad that these two eminent men of words could not reach each other. Emerson put one such failure into a disguised anecdote: “ ‘I love Henry,’ said one of his friends, ‘but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree.’ “
In my opinion, like many fathers, he simply could not abide the younger man’s independence or his failure to achieve what was expected of him in the manner it was expected. Even in his eulogy after Thoreau’s death at forty four from Tuberculosis, Emerson cannot restrain himself from derogation.
“ …I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party. “
As the rupture evolved, Thoreau was becoming, well, Thoreau. Time would demonstrate that he was developing into precisely what Emerson could never fully credit: a masterful writer, effective social-activist and naturalist. Though there is no evidence for the celebrated exchange between the two on the night Thoreau spent in jail for his civil disobedience, the story does illustrate a deeper truth about the relationship. Supposedly, when Emerson came to the jail and asked Thoreau what he was doing in there, the younger man responded, “What are you doing out there?”
I will transition to a few short comments about Walden by turning this phrase, because I believe many readers also misunderstand what Thoreau was doing “out there.” In my opinion, there are two major ways in which readers misread Walden.
First, some read it as a sacred text. They fall for a myth of a hermit sitting and meditating beside an edenic pond. This leads them to putting passages on posters with little more merit than the sentiments on a Hallmark greeting card.
On the other hand some (and, here, I fear my friend Everyman may be among them) go to the opposite extreme; they chastise Thoreau for insufficiency at doing something he never intended to do. He went to Walden seeking privacy from a crowded household so that he could write a book (The Week on the Concord and Merrimack) and to “conduct an experiment in economic independence.” (Richard Schneider)
Neither of these requires isolation from family or friends. And his understandings of the flaws in a society built on production and consumerism are as relevant today as it was a hundred and fifty years ago.
Adam Smith contends: “Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences and amusements of human life.”
Thoreau concludes from his experiment, “…a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
One need not agree with Thoreau’s conclusions, or one can agree with them and find them impractical, but I think we would be a lot better off today if more people had seriously engaged with the multiple messages in this book.
Another theme of the book is the observation of nature. Thoreau developed into a leading naturalist and in many ways his observations (especially regarding seeds and the manner in which forests develop) mirrored and complemented those of his contemporary Charles Darwin. In this work, of course, he diverged widely from the ambitions of Emerson. Yet it is to this work, in part, that Emerson refers in the moving concluding words of his eulogy:
“The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst of his broken task which none else can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.”
To the end of his life Emerson regarded Thoreau as his best friend—even after Alzheimer’s disease had robbed him of the ability to recall his name.
Scholar Robert Sattelmeyer describes it as, “a long personal struggle between the two men: a struggle to be heard, to be understood, to prevail philosophically, and to realize the high and noble friendship that each aspired to but despaired of ever achieving.”
Thoreau was a senior at Harvard when he was influenced by Emerson’s early essay Nature. They knew each other before that, since Emerson had written to Harvard’s President to recommend a scholarship for Thoreau. Fourteen years older than Thoreau, Emerson was well established and the leader of the transcendentalist circle when he delivered the graduation address (The American Scholar) at Thoreau’s 1837 graduation.
Henry’s journals, which would swell through twenty four years to over two million words, were almost surely prompted by Emerson. The first entry, on Oct. 22, 1837 reads: “‘What are you doing now?’ he asked. Do you keep a journal?’ So I make my first entry today.”
As editor of the transcendentalists’ magazine The Dial, Emerson would champion Henry’s writing, but he unwittingly gave him bad advice by encouraging him to underwrite the cost of publication for his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. (This led to Thoreau’s quip in his journal in October of 1857, “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.”)
One of the reasons for going to Walden (he built his cabin on land owned by Emerson) was to work on that book. Previously, he had lived with the Emerson family, exchanging chores, and conversation with Emerson, for his room and board. He would live there again when Emerson traveled in Europe developing a close (though there is no suggestion of sexual) relationship with Emerson’s wife Lidian.
However, the stress in the relationship dates from the forties and the lack of success of A Week. Emerson seems to have been disappointed in Henry’s failure to live up to his high expectations. Noted biographer of both men, Robert Richardson, describes it thus: “Emerson felt and tried to fight what he perceived as Thoreau’s increasing, unreachable, provincial isolation and loneliness.”
For his part, Thoreau wrote: “I had tenderly cherished the flower of our friendship till one day my friend treated it as a weed. It (did not survive the shock but) drooped & withered from that hour.—A Friend avoids the subject of friendship—in conversation.—It is a very sacred relation which is not liable to a vulgar difference.”
Efforts at rapprochement never seem to work when two people do love each other but cannot communicate. How sad that these two eminent men of words could not reach each other. Emerson put one such failure into a disguised anecdote: “ ‘I love Henry,’ said one of his friends, ‘but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree.’ “
In my opinion, like many fathers, he simply could not abide the younger man’s independence or his failure to achieve what was expected of him in the manner it was expected. Even in his eulogy after Thoreau’s death at forty four from Tuberculosis, Emerson cannot restrain himself from derogation.
“ …I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party. “
As the rupture evolved, Thoreau was becoming, well, Thoreau. Time would demonstrate that he was developing into precisely what Emerson could never fully credit: a masterful writer, effective social-activist and naturalist. Though there is no evidence for the celebrated exchange between the two on the night Thoreau spent in jail for his civil disobedience, the story does illustrate a deeper truth about the relationship. Supposedly, when Emerson came to the jail and asked Thoreau what he was doing in there, the younger man responded, “What are you doing out there?”
I will transition to a few short comments about Walden by turning this phrase, because I believe many readers also misunderstand what Thoreau was doing “out there.” In my opinion, there are two major ways in which readers misread Walden.
First, some read it as a sacred text. They fall for a myth of a hermit sitting and meditating beside an edenic pond. This leads them to putting passages on posters with little more merit than the sentiments on a Hallmark greeting card.
On the other hand some (and, here, I fear my friend Everyman may be among them) go to the opposite extreme; they chastise Thoreau for insufficiency at doing something he never intended to do. He went to Walden seeking privacy from a crowded household so that he could write a book (The Week on the Concord and Merrimack) and to “conduct an experiment in economic independence.” (Richard Schneider)
Neither of these requires isolation from family or friends. And his understandings of the flaws in a society built on production and consumerism are as relevant today as it was a hundred and fifty years ago.
Adam Smith contends: “Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences and amusements of human life.”
Thoreau concludes from his experiment, “…a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
One need not agree with Thoreau’s conclusions, or one can agree with them and find them impractical, but I think we would be a lot better off today if more people had seriously engaged with the multiple messages in this book.
Another theme of the book is the observation of nature. Thoreau developed into a leading naturalist and in many ways his observations (especially regarding seeds and the manner in which forests develop) mirrored and complemented those of his contemporary Charles Darwin. In this work, of course, he diverged widely from the ambitions of Emerson. Yet it is to this work, in part, that Emerson refers in the moving concluding words of his eulogy:
“The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst of his broken task which none else can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.”
To the end of his life Emerson regarded Thoreau as his best friend—even after Alzheimer’s disease had robbed him of the ability to recall his name.
Zeke wrote: "The relationship between Emerson and Thoreau is actually one of the more complex and intriguing ones in American literary history. "Impressive and very interesting, Zeke. Thanks so much for taking the time to post this.
Patrice wrote: "I'm reading a book about Saudi Arabia written by Carmen Bin Laden, Osama's sister-in-law. ...Emerson is on my shoulder as I read this book"Whether or not one agrees with Emerson, his point of view has to be considered and dealt with.
I spent about an hour earlier this morning reading through everyone’s wonderful posts…so insightful and thought provoking. I only wish my schedule allowed for me to take the time to read this carefully through the posts on a day to day basis. I think it is safe to say that both Emerson and Thoreau come from social class background that would allow the kind of time it takes to not only become fully immersed in philosophical thoughts about what self-reliance and authenticity are but to also have the time to write about it in detail. This is not something that most working class people have the time to do, but it doesn’t mean that their ideas would be any less valuable; in fact, their thoughts may be all the more valuable because working people represent a huge portion of the population in Emerson’s time, as well as our own. I wonder, Zeke or anyone, do you have any suggestions for writing that has been published by working Americans regarding the subjects of self-reliance and authenticity during the same time period as Emerson’s work? I think it would be a great experience to see how their ideas compare with Emerson’s.
I keep thinking about Emerson’s wife and children. I want to know if, as a result of Emerson’s dedication to excluding himself from material pursuits, they suffered in any way. In a much earlier post Adelle (Post No. 7) noted that Emerson’s wife did much of the hard household tasks. If he really stuck to ideas about materialistic pursuits, I don’t know that he would have troubled himself to engage in essential, albeit mundane, tasks that are necessary in maintaining a sanitary living environment. Someone has to do the dishes, take out the garbage, wash the laundry etc. Would these have been materialistic pursuits to Emerson? Who would have done those things around his house…his wife, a housekeeper? This all goes back to one of Everyman’s earlier posts (Post No. 65) about others that may have provided the means for Emerson to live his ideal life, ensuring a sort of consistency in the work they did, but at the same time possibly sacrificing their ideal lives.
Zeke wrote: "I find it interesting that Emerson’s protégé, Henry David Thoreau, has not been mentioned more in this discussion. In many ways he is the exemplar of Emerson’s exhortations in Self-Reliance. This ..."------------------------------------------------------
I too was surprised that Thoreau was not mentioned more often in the discussion posts. I read through about the first third of Walden, about a year ago, before some required reading for a class took me away from the book. I was fascinated by his experiment. Would it be safe to say that Emerson provided the inspiration that set Thoreau in the direction of finding his personal identity, but then Emerson (from your historical account of the relationship between the two men) seems to have looked down upon or been disappointed by the direction that Thoreau takes in finding his place in this Universe? It’s strange because I thought Emerson suggests that we follow our intuitions and not use the words of those who have gone before us to determine our thinking. I thought that Thoreau’s decision to deviate from Emerson’s ideas in order to follow his own would not have only been greatly respected by Emerson but that it also would have been following the exact advice that Emerson gives in Self-Reliance, to trust yourself.
Jennifer shares two very interesting, thought provoking posts. I am away all day today and part of tomorrow, but I will be thinking about the questions she raises and want to try to share a few thoughts in response.
As for Patrice's comment about men and housekeeping--no comment!!!!!
As for Patrice's comment about men and housekeeping--no comment!!!!!
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"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)” -Walt Whitman- ... I like how Emerson said it. " A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
I've been thinking a lot about this issue of consistency and contradiction.
Emerson is a bit unclear in his various statements. As you point out, he calls a "foolish" consistency a bad thing, implying that there is such as thing as a non-foolish consistency which could be a good thing. Yet he also says "I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward."
IMO, consistency is often a good and indeed necessary thing. I am consistently faithful to my wife, which I don't consider at all foolish. I expect my oil supplier to be consistent in keeping my oil tank filled with the right product to keep my furnace running; I don't want them filling it one month with fuel oil and the next with kerosene because it would be foolish to consistently fill it with oil.
I do recognize that change can be necessary, and that we can hold on to consistency too long. One should be open to changing ideas that have outlived their usefulness. Life does involve contradictions, and inflexibility at the wrong time is not a virtue. But at the same time, I think Emerson is a bit casual about the value of consistency in keeping one's personal life and the life of society in a healthy state.
As for the Whitman quote, it exemplifies one of the traits about Whitman which I personally find least attractive.