My previous blog post was about a notable Dutch woman who was born in April 1892. Now I am writing about the core emphasis of a notable American man who died ten years before that, in April 1882. That man was the essayist, lecturer, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In this post, I am giving little biographical
information about Emerson, other than to say that he was born in Boston in 1803
and died in nearby Concord four weeks before his 79th birthday. Other
facts about Emerson’s life can be found (here) on Wikipedia.**
The Background of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
Emerson’s best-known essay is “Self-Reliance,”
first published in 1841 when he was still in his late 30s. Lying behind the
public issue of that 30-page essay was the philosophy of transcendentalism.
In 1836, Emerson and some of his friends formed
the Transcendental Club. Their core emphasis was derived from German
philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose book Critique of Pure Reason (1781) propounded
what became known as transcendental idealism.
That idealism held that there is an innate moral
law within people that forms their interpretation of life experiences. Emphasizing
what Kant called "intuitions of the mind,” transcendentalism was a
reaction against the extreme rationalism of the Enlightenment.
Such rationalism had encroached upon Harvard, where
Emerson had studied in the 1820s. In 1838, he was invited to address the graduating
class at Harvard Divinity School. That talk was highly praised by some, and
strongly criticized by others. (He was not invited to speak at Harvard again
until 1869!)
Emerson charged the Harvard graduates to turn
from the dead dogmas of the past and to seek the immediacy of Truth by mystical
contact with God in the present. He declared, “It is the office of the true
teacher [or preacher] to show us that God is, not was.”
The Core Ideas of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
As is apparently true of many others, I was
long under the mistaken idea that Emerson’s concept of self-reliance meant living/acting
independently without reliance on other people. But that was not his main
point.
Rather, Emerson stressed the importance of
trusting one’s own intuition for contact with God rather than relying on that
which had been believed and written in the past.
Although he was ordained as a (Unitarian)
minister and was a pastor for a couple of years at Boston’s historic Second
Church, he left that post in 1832 and never served as a pastor again. Rather,
he became a critic of “organized religion,” as evidenced by his 1838 address at
Harvard Divinity School.
Although the expression was likely not used
back then, Emerson was definitely an early example of a person who was “spiritual
but not religious.’ He saw religion as reliance upon a dead past, but he reveled
in the presence of God he saw in the present, largely through nature.
Theology has in recent decades been called
“faith seeking understanding”—and Emerson likely would not have been averse to
that description. His objection was to “theology seeking faith,” that is,
reliance on ideas of the past rather than upon one’s direct contact with God in
the present.
While there is much in Emerson’s thought with
which I disagree, I am in basic agreement with his emphasis on self-reliance.
A Selection of Emerson’s Words
I am ending this post about Emerson with some of my favorite statements he made through the years. The first are oft-quoted words from “Self-Reliance”:
I have been unable to find the source, but these words about the reality (or danger?) of new ideas are often attributed to Emerson, although they are sometimes said to be from Oliver Wendell Holmes (who was six years younger than Emerson):
The gist of the following quote is from a letter Emerson wrote his daughter Ellen in 1854:
There is also no documentation for this quote, but I close with these significant words that are certainly Emersonian, if not directly from Emerson himself:
_____
** I also enjoyed reading and recommend Self-Reliance:
The Story of Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010), a delightful 140-page book Peggy
Caravantes authored for junior high school students.
** For a deeper understanding of Emerson, I also recommend Emerson: The Ideal in America, an informative 2007 video available (here) on YouTube.
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Here are important comments from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for bringing up Emerson, some of whose works I read many years ago. The one quote I remember is 'Every government is by nature corrupt.'
"There seems to be a parallel between Emerson's idea of self-reliance and the ideas of Kierkegaard, who advocated a 'leap of faith,' something that must be done on a personal level. Kierkegaard and Emerson were contemporaries, although Kierkegaard was ten years younger than Emerson; he died in 1855 at the age of just 42."
Thanks for your comments, Eric. I said they were important because it gives me the opportunity to comment briefly on two matters:
DeleteI especially like how you saw the connection between the ideas of Emerson and Kierkegaard. Indeed, SK's advocacy for a "leap of faith" is closely related to Emerson's emphasis on self-reliance. As far as I know, SK didn't use the term "self-reliance" in his writings, but the "leap of faith" is something that has to be done by an intuitive individual. One of SK's significant emphases was on the priority of "the individual" ("den Enkelte" in Danish) over "the masses," an idea very close to that of Emerson's "self-reliance."
With regard to your first paragraph, Emerson published an essay titled "Politics" in 1844. (That was the final year of the presidency of John Tyler, who in 2021 was ranked 39th of the 44 Presidents.) In that essay he wrote “Every actual state is corrupt,” which I assume is the basis for the expression of that statement you mentioned. In his emphasis on self-reliance, he didn't want people to rely on states/governments any more than on organized religious or educational institutions.
At about the same time that I received Eric's email, I also received these comments by email from local Thinking Friend Vern Barnet:
ReplyDelete"Although I am a Unitarian Universalist minister and share the same birthday as Emerson, I am no Emerson expert. While there is much to admire about 'Self-Reliance,' and indeed the famous 1838 Harvard 'Divinity School Address,' Emerson's influence helped to lead to the neglect of a proper sense community. In part, he left the ministry because of his failure, in my view, to understand the meaning of Holy Communion and the Church as the Body of Christ. His writings and lecturing may have been a corrective to the stiffness found within his culture, but they led to over-correction and the disastrous weakening of a sense of mutual covenant in American politics so evident today, with attacks on the national covenant, the Constitution, at the extreme. When I was last at Harvard, above the elevator door in one of the dormitories were the words, not of Emerson, but the balanced words of his godson, William James: 'The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.' I don't hold Emerson solely responsible for today's corrosive "Sheilaism" (cf. Bellah's 'Habits of the Heart'), but he sure did not help."
Thanks much, Vern, for your critical words about Emerson. As I wrote at the end of my post, much in Emerson’s thought with which I disagree, and one disagreement is related to that which you mentioned. (Of course, I also disagree with central tenets of his unitarianism.)
DeleteI responded to Eric Dollard's mentioning of Kierkegaard above, and he (SK) was also criticized along the same line as you criticized Emerson. Some have responded to the criticism of SK by saying it was a shame he lived in a country with a dominant state church with which he disagreed and did not have the opportunity to be a part of a "free church" community of faith. Even though there was no established church in Massachusetts in Emerson's day, the dominant form of Christianity was not supportive of the type of faith that, I think, he could have found compatible.
Then I received this brief, personal comments from Thinking Friend Jerry Jumper, a "country doctor" in southwest Missouri from 1971 until his recent retirement:
ReplyDelete"Thank you. Without knowing it, I believe Emerson expresses my life view at this time of my life."
Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky wrote,
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy. I have known Emerson through his poetry. You have broadened my perspective.
In response I replied,
"By contrast, I haven't read (or known) much of Emerson's poetry. Of course, I knew at least the last line of the first verse of his 'Concord Hymn,' which was sung at the completion of the Concord Battle Monument on July 4, 1837:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Emerson's "self reliance," "trusting in one's own intuition," reminds me of the Quaker tradition of "the inner light," and their mystical preference of direct communication with God more so than the Bible and the sacraments.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Garth, for your perceptive comments. I thought a bit about the Quakers when I was responding to Vern (above), but didn't write anything about them, so I appreciate the comments you posted about them.
DeleteI have just now found this statement by Emerson: "The more I reflect upon the Quakers, the more I admire the early ones, and am surprised at their being so far in advance of their age, but they have educated the world till it is now able to go beyond those teachers."
I didn't get to read this till late yesterday. I appreciate the clarification on his "self-reliance." By the way, apparently Nietzsche was a big fan of Emerson. In the introduction to his translation of the Gay Science, Walter Kaufmann writes: “Emerson was one of Nietzsche’s great loves ever since he read him as a schoolboy.”
ReplyDeleteYes, in my reading and watching videos about Emerson, I was surprised by the several references to Nietzsche that I read/heard. With regard to what Kaufman wrote, I was also interested in this statement from a book review of Benedetta Zavatta, "Individuality and Beyond: Nietzsche Reads Emerson" (2019). (https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/individuality-and-beyond-nietzsche-reads-emerson/):
Delete"In an 1883 letter to his friend Franz Overbeck, Nietzsche, in a rhapsodic register, writes that he feels Ralph Waldo Emerson to be a kindred spirit, a "brother soul" [Bruder-Seele] (187), as Nietzsche puts it. Nietzsche encountered Emerson's essays as a schoolboy, and he continued engaging with them well into his active philosophical years. This affinity between Nietzsche and Emerson has long been noted. In his 1974 translation of Nietzsche's "Gay Science," Walter Kaufmann devotes a full section of his introduction to this topic and reports that the first edition of the text carried an epigraph from Emerson. While noting some points of similarity between Nietzsche and Emerson, he says that 'the differences are far more striking' than the affinities."
You know far more about Nietzsche than I do, but my impression is that the concluding statement is probably true.
Here are comments received this afternoon from Thinking Friend Larry Riedinger in Wisconsin:
ReplyDelete"I too find this essay very stimulating and encouraging!
"I find some examples of that perspective in William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. It was held in high regard by The Oxford Groups - from which sprouted Alcoholics Anonymous.
"I also wonder if Emerson was influenced by Paul’s encouragement of Timothy with 'I know WHOM I have believed, and am persuaded … .' Emphasis mine. I sang that in a beloved hymn for about 25 years before the huge import of 'whom' really got my attention! I suddenly felt free from the old - very adolescent - burden of doctrinal debates. I am still grateful for the inner freedom that He whom I know has graced me!"
"Thanks so much for your article!"
Larry, good to hear from you again! -- Interesting that you saw the connection with William James (1842~1910): Emerson was James's godfather.
DeleteSince he was a Unitarian, Emerson was probably not influenced so much by what Paul wrote Timothy since for Paul the "whom" was Jesus Christ and Emerson's assessment of Jesus was far different from Paul's. But I am happy you found the great significance of Paul writing "whom" rather than "what."