Writer, lecturer, and philosopher, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, is
regarded as one of the primary founders of
American literature
and can be credited with inspiring many prolific
writers,
writing styles, cultural perspectives, and
philosophical
movements.
Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston Massachusetts
to Ruth
Haskins and William Emerson, his father being
a Christian
minister descending from a lineage of previous
ministers. During
his adolescence, Emerson studied at Harvard
University, and
following graduation, he would go on to teach
at his brother’s
school for young women. After several years
of teaching, he
would then enroll into Divinity School at
Harvard to train to
become a pastor. In 1829, he was ordained
into Boston’s Second
Church, and would spend the following 3 years
or so as a pastor.
During this time, however, Emerson would find
an increasing
sense of detachment and disagreement with
traditional religious
practices and ways of thinking. Specifically,
he found that
contemporary Christianity countered and sedated
the very essence
of human spirituality that it was supposed
to inspire. Around
three years after becoming a pastor, and after
about 1 year
following his first wife’s young death of
tuberculosis, Emerson
resigned from the church. "I have sometimes
thought that, in
order to be a good minister, it was necessary
to leave the
ministry.” Emerson wrote in his journal.
Following his stint as a pastor, Emerson spent
the next
years writing and publishing his first major
essays while
developing a career as a public lecturer.
Emerson would make his
first significant mark on the public with
his controversial
lectures that suggested the value of separating
from commonly
withheld religious ideas and traditions, and
in place, argued
for infusing new independent, forward thinking
that relied on
the self for divine experience and understanding.
During the following decades, Emerson continued
giving lectures and producing several major,
influential works of literature. He would
soon become recognized as one of the mid-
19th century leading writers and thinkers,
inspiring individuals like Henry David Thoreau,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson,
and innumerable others, as well as being the
key figure in helping give way to new cultural
perspectives and philosophical movements,
especially the philosophy known as transcendentalism,
which Emerson is regarded as the father of.
Emerson’s philosophy can perhaps be best
explained in two
of his most famous essays; Nature published
in 1836 and Self-
Reliance published in 1841. Between these
two works, Emerson
primarily discusses man and nature being a
unified, singular
whole, the value of trusting one’s own intuition
and sense of
reality, and the realization and forthright
expressions of one’s
unique greatness and truth. More specifically,
Emerson posed
that all of nature is an expression and permeation
of one
metaphysical essence of the universe, or god,
and that we are
all both the expressions and expressors of
this singular
oneness. “Nature in its ministry to man,”
Emerson wrote, “is not
only the material but is also the process
and the result.” In
this, there is no separation between humanity
and nature, where
humanity wills itself onto nature nor nature
onto humanity, but
rather, everything is essentially nature interacting
with
nature. “Standing on the bare ground,”
Emerson wrote, “my head
bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into
infinite space, all
mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent
eyeball; I am
nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal
Being
circulate through me; I am part or particle
of God.”
For Emerson, the distinction between the trees,
the bugs,
the dirt, and the stars is all but a phenomenal
distinction. Not
necessarily a real one. Rather, he believed
that god is one
thing found in everything and through everything.
Every object,
every individual and every particle of existence
in the eternal
now. As such, for Emerson, the transcendent
spiritual experience
is not found in any outward, previous, or
future source, but
within the individual in any given moment.
Moments where one’s
own mind illuminates the common features of
their surroundings
with potency, beauty, and interconnectedness.
Alongside this, Emerson also asserted that
nature is in a
constant state of flux, and that we must live
in coordination
with its process, trusting our own intuition
and flowing with
the changing self. In order to do this, we
must not hold
ourselves to ideas, beliefs, or traditions
of the past,
including our own. Rather, Emerson suggested
that our state is
subject to change, and consequently, we might
feel or think one
way today and the opposing way tomorrow. Instead
of fighting
this, however, Emerson argued that we must
lean into it. “No
man,” he wrote, “can antedate his experience
or guess what
faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock,
any more than he
can draw today the face of a person whom he
shall see tomorrow
for the first time.” In other words, no
one can know what life
might be like tomorrow, nor what such life
may cause one to
think or feel. However, one must move with
it, and live
according to the present now.
Out of this emerges what is perhaps Emerson’s
most popular
concept known as self-reliance.
Emerson argued that we often neglect to ever
realize the
unique perspective and greatness that comes
from our particular
culmination of experiences and states. Not
because we don’t have
access to such greatness, but because we are
often held back and
pulled away from it by others and systems
of convention. For
Emerson, great artists, thinkers, writers
and so on aren’t
necessarily great merely because they possess
access to any
higher, exclusive source of information or
being, but because
they are willing to address and express candidly
what they feel
in any given moment of life, despite how it
might reflect on the
standard norm. And in doing so, they reveal,
not only their
unique take on the world, but also the thoughts
and sensations
hidden within a great many others who feel
the same. Arguably,
great artists and writers aren’t popular
because they say
something no one has thought of or experienced
before, but
because they say something that most of us
have but weren’t sure
if we were right to do so.
Emerson believed that for the sake of one’s
work and sense
of self, the individual must rely on themselves
alone and
recognize that what they feel and think is
real and legitimate.
In a very Cartesian idea, if we can know anything
at all it is
merely that we exist. And if we can suppose
anything at all, it
is merely our own experience. This does not
disparage our
sympathy for others, others’ ideas, nor
our connection with the
natural world, but rather, it serves to prevent
the
disparagement of our self amidst it all. It
serves to promote
trust in our own unique interpretations and
experiences and
encourages us to express their individual
merit.
In slight contrast to Emerson, it appears
reasonable to
also argue that perhaps there are variations
in the resources
and conditions of each individual, and thus,
one’s ability to
trust and/or express themselves is not always
equal. If nature
and human is a unified whole carried out through
a process of
self-fulfilling change, is it not also possible
that one’s own
ability to defend and tap into themselves
is part of a natural
order and fluctuation beyond one’s will?
Of course, this simply
serves to beg the question that if we are
all transparent
eyeballs; nothings seeing everything, how
much say do we have in
how much vision we have?
Perhaps Emerson’s concept of self-reliance
can still exist
in harmony with this question. Perhaps so
long as one
authentically stands in their own position
of confusion and
limitation, they have still remained in accordance
with their
own relative truth and greatness, and the
notion of self-
reliance holds steady.
Of course, like all philosophies and philosophers,
Emerson’s ideas in general aren’t without
flaws or counter
arguments. “But it is the fault of our rhetoric
that we cannot
strongly state one fact without seeming to
belie some other. I
hold our actual knowledge very cheap.” Emerson
wrote. With this,
Emerson himself suggested that he never spoke
with any objective
certainty or final truth regarding what he
thought.
For this and other reasons unmentioned, self-reliance
and
individuality is not easy. It does not simply
come from agreeing
with poetic prose. To know and trust one’s
self in the face of
consistent change, confusion, and a world
that works to
consolidate everyone, is perhaps one of the
hardest things
anyone can do. And furthermore, not always,
but certainly some
of the time, it comes with the risk of some
amount of separation
from the common populous and conventional
norms. However,
perhaps the question one must ask here is,
if all we can know
and experience is our self, how can any life
be lived fully if
one denies themselves before even trying?
If we hide or hinder
ourselves out of the fear of rejection from
others, are we not,
in essence, rejecting our own self first;
the only person we
truly and inescapably have to live with?
Emerson’s work is a reinforcement and reminder
of the
importance of combating this. To attempt to
live in the spirit
of individuality, self-honesty, and authenticity
in each moment
and each context of life. To raise the sail
of one’s own ship,
using the unknowable force of the wind while
steering as best we
can, always moving forward, finding beauty
in the vastness that
surrounds us, and creating our self anew.
