The Philosophy Of Emerson

This study offers the first comprehensive account of Emerson's philosophy since his philosophical rehabilitation began in the late 1970s. It builds on the historical reconstruction proposed in the author's previous book, Emerson's Metaphysics, and like that study draws on the entire Emerson corpus—the poetry and sermons included. The aim here is expository. The overall though not exclusive emphasis is on identity, as the first term of Emerson's metaphysics of identity and flowing or metamorphosis. This metaphysics, or general conception of the nature of reality, is what grounds his epistemology and ethics, as well as his esthetic, religious, and political thought. Acknowledging its primacy enables a general account like this to avoid the anti-realist overemphasis on epistemology and language that has often characterized rehabilitation readings of his philosophy. After an initial chapter on Emerson's metaphysics, the subsequent chapters devoted to the other branches of his thought also begin with their "necessary foundation" in identity, which is the law of things and the law of mind alike. Perception of identity in metamorphosis is what characterizes the philosopher, the poet, the scientist, the reformer, and the man of faith and virtue. Identity of mind and world is felt in what Emerson calls the moral sentiment. Identity is Emerson's answer to the Sphinx-riddle of life experienced as a puzzling succession of facts and events.

This meticulously edited Ralph Waldo Emerson collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Introduction: Ralph Waldo Emerson Books: The Conduct of Life: Fate Power Wealth Culture Behavior Worship Considerations by the Way Beauty Illusions Essays-First Series: History Self-Reliance Compensation Spiritual Laws Love Friendship Prudence Heroism The Over-Soul Circles Intellect Art Essays-Second Series: The Poet Experience Character Manners Gifts Nature Politics Nominalist and Realist New England Reformers Nature: Commodity Beauty Language Discipline Idealism Spirit Prospects Representative Men: Plato Emanuel Swedenborg Michel de Montaigne William Shakespeare Napoleon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe English Traits: First Visit to England Voyage to England Land Race Ability Manners Truth Character Cockayne Wealth Aristocracy Universities Religion Literature The Times Stonehenge Personal Result Speech at Manchester Society and Solitude: Civilization Art Eloquence Domestic Life Farming Works and Days Books Clubs Courage Success Old Age Letters and Social Aims: Poetry and Imagination Social Aims Eloquence Resources The Comic Quotation and Originality Progress of Culture Persian Poetry Inspiration Greatness Immortality Addresses and Lectures: The American Scholar An Address in Divinity College Literary Ethics The Method of Nature Man the Reformer Lecture on The Times The Conservative The Transcendentalist The Young American Letter to President Van Buren The Man of Letters The Celebration of Intellect... Other Essays: The Lord's Supper Thoughts on Modern Literature Walter Savage Landor The Senses and the Soul Transcendentalism Prayers Fourierism and the Socialists Chardon Street and Bible Conventions Agriculture of Massachusetts Harvard University English Reformers Europe and European Books The Tragic Past and Present Perpetual Forces Demonology The Preacher Milton Thoreau Michael Angelo Plutarch Ezra Ripley Mary Moody Emerson Samuel Hoar Carlyle George L. Stearns Saadi American Civilization The Fortune of the Republic The Sovereignty of Ethics The Natural History of Intellect...

This edition includes: Introduction: Ralph Waldo Emerson Books: The Conduct of Life: Fate Power Wealth Culture Behavior Worship Considerations by the Way Beauty Illusions Essays-First Series: History Self-Reliance Compensation Spiritual Laws Love Friendship Prudence Heroism The Over-Soul Circles Intellect Art Essays-Second Series: The Poet Experience Character Manners Gifts Nature Politics Nominalist and Realist New England Reformers Nature: Commodity Beauty Language Discipline Idealism Spirit Prospects Representative Men: Plato Emanuel Swedenborg Michel de Montaigne William Shakespeare Napoleon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe English Traits: First Visit to England Voyage to England Land Race Ability Manners Truth Character Cockayne Wealth Aristocracy Universities Religion Literature The Times Stonehenge Personal Result Speech at Manchester Society and Solitude: Civilization Art Eloquence Domestic Life Farming Works and Days Books Clubs Courage Success Old Age Letters and Social Aims: Poetry and Imagination Social Aims Eloquence Resources The Comic Quotation and Originality Progress of Culture Persian Poetry Inspiration Greatness Immortality Addresses and Lectures: The American Scholar An Address in Divinity College Literary Ethics The Method of Nature Man the Reformer Lecture on The Times The Conservative The Transcendentalist The Young American Letter to President Van Buren The Man of Letters The Celebration of Intellect... Other Essays: The Lord's Supper Thoughts on Modern Literature Walter Savage Landor The Senses and the Soul Transcendentalism Prayers Fourierism and the Socialists Chardon Street and Bible Conventions Agriculture of Massachusetts Harvard University English Reformers Europe and European Books The Tragic Past and Present Perpetual Forces Demonology The Preacher Milton Thoreau Michael Angelo Plutarch Ezra Ripley Mary Moody Emerson Samuel Hoar Carlyle George L. Stearns Saadi American Civilization The Fortune of the Republic The Sovereignty of Ethics The Natural History of Intellect...

This book situates Ralph Waldo Emerson in the tradition of philosophy as “spiritual exercise”, arguing that the defining feature of his literary philosophy is the conviction that there is an inherent link between moral persuasion and literary excellence. Hosseini persuasively argues that the Emersonian project can be viewed as an extension of Socrates’ call for a return to the beginning of philosophy, to search for a way of revolutionizing our ways of seeing from within. Examining Emerson’s provocative style of writing, Hosseini contends that his prose is shaped by a desire to bring about psychagogia, or influencing the soul through the power of words. This book furthermore examines the evolving nature of Emerson’s thoughts on “scholarly action” and its implications, his religious temperament as an aesthetic experience of the world through wonder, and the reasons for a resounding acknowledgment of despair in his essay “Experience.” In the concluding chapter, Hosseini explores the depth of Emerson’s engagement with the classical Persian poets and argues that what we may call his “literary humanism” is informed by Persian Adab, exemplified in the writings of Rumi, Hafiz, and Saadi. Weaving together themes from Persian philosophy and Emersonian transcendentalism, Hosseini establishes Emerson’s way of seeing as refreshingly relevant, showing that the questions he tackled in his writings are as pressing today as they were in his time.

Literary Ethics An Oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence." Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays - Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 - represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world." He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of fellow Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

Though few might think to connect the two figures, Ralph Waldo Emerson was an important influence on Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, Emerson played a fundamental role in shaping Nietzsche's philosophical ideas on individualism, perfectionism, and the pursuit of virtue, as well as his critiques of social conditioning, religious dogmatism, and anti-natural morality. With Individuality and Beyond, Benedetta Zavatta offers the first philosophical interpretation of Emerson's influence on Nietzsche based on a sound philological analysis of previously unpublished materials from Nietzsche's private library. Nietzsche's collection reveals numerous copies of Emerson's essays covered with annotations and marginalia as Nietzsche revisited these works throughout his life. Through close-reading, Zavatta casts a new light on the ways in which Emerson's work informed Nietzsche's defining ideas of self-creation, the relation between fate and free will, overcoming morality of customs and achieving moral autonomy, and the transvaluation of such values as compassion and altruism. Zavatta organizes these concepts into two main lines of thought: the first concerns the development of the individual personality, or the achievement of intellectual and moral autonomy and original self-expression. The second, on the contrary, concerns the overcoming of individuality and the need to transcend a limited view of the world by continually questioning one's own values and engaging with opposing perspectives. Ultimately, Zavatta clarifies the surprising contributions that Emerson made to 20th century European philosophy. She provides a fresh portrait of Emerson as an American thinker long stereotyped as a na�ve idealist disinterested in the social issues of his day. Seen through the eyes of Nietzsche, his acute interpreter, Emerson becomes an incisive cultural critic, whose contributions underpin contemporary philosophy.

"Emerson was very much a person of his era, but his thought is timeless because it partakes of the perennial wisdom that has permeated philosophy and religion in every age and culture. Emerson continues to be relevant because, as he said of himself, 'I am an endless seeker with no past at my back.' Spiritual seekers of this and coming ages will continue to find in Emerson a kindred soul." - from the Introduction Master of the aphorism, Emerson is the most quoted of all American writers. Yet there have been few anthologies of Emerson's sayings and none quite like this one. Drawing from all of Emerson - his early sermons and lectures, his journals, his many books and essays, and his poetry -this unique book of thoughtfully selected passages captures the many textures and nuances of this exceptional mind. We find a spiritual message at the heart of his philosophy. Emerson's spiritual vision is reflected in these selections, the most relevant writings for today's spiritual seekers. This meditation collection will provide an opportunity to celebrate and re-evaluate Emerson's contribution to America's spiritual history. The depth and breadth of Emerson's words will show a new generation of Americans how to bring an open heart and a critical mind to the spiritual search.

How do I live a good life, one that is deeply personal and sensitive to others? John T. Lysaker suggests that those who take this question seriously need to reexamine the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In philosophical reflections on topics such as genius, divinity, friendship, and reform, Lysaker explores "self-culture" or the attempt to remain true to one's deepest commitments. He argues that being true to ourselves requires recognition of our thoroughly dependent and relational nature. Lysaker guides readers from simple self-absorption toward a more fulfilling and responsive engagement with the world.

"Every great man is a unique". R.W Emerson told us that Self-confidence is always about independence : "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson is a classic collection of essays by the great American writer and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson that includes the following titles: Introduction -- The American scholar -- Compensation -- Self-reliance -- Friendship -- Heroism -- Manners -- Gifts -- Nature -- Shakespeare; or, The poet -- Prudence -- Circles -- Notes Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature". Following this work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet", and "Experience." Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.