>> Alright, let's get
started.
We have got a lot to get
through today and all
of it will be on the mid-term.
Speaking of which the midterm,
I had advised that you look
at the Edwards' lecture
before the mid-term.
I still advise that.
if anyone is having a
technical difficulty,
make sure that you have the
latest version of Real Player
for either Windows or the Mac.
Real Player is now available
for the Mac and it does work,
since that is the
way I look at it.
of course, I find it a
little bit horrifying to look
at so I don't look
at it very much.
Nevertheless, it is there.
The second thing, have we talked
about the format
of the mid-term?
Pretty easy English majoring
type of midterm, but for those
of you who are interested
in not being surprised,
part one is terms,
names, blah, blah, blah,
things like Alexander Pope or
the Covenant of Grace, okay.
So I want you to
identify what they are,
but more importantly I want you
to explain what the significance
of the item is to the
narrative that we are generating
in this course or the
set of narratives, right.
Significance is everything,
four out of five or six.
So you will do four that should
take you about 10 minutes,
so don't spend a
lot of time on it.
The next part is
basically the reading check
and we will ask you to
do 10 out of 12 passages
that we will give to you.
They are reasonably
biggish, like that biggish,
not that you can really see.
Say three of them fit on a
page, something like that,
a whole variety of different
genres and things like that.
we will ask you to identify
10 out of the 12 by author
and title, very simple.
We don't want you to
spend a lot of time
on it, we say 20 minutes.
Don't spend anymore
than 20 minutes and try
to make time on that section.
We are giving you passages
that we think are distinctive,
stylistically and thematically.
They will either be things that
we have highlighted in lecture
or that are you know
at the beginning
of an important section
of whatever we are reading
or just one of those
highlight me moments, okay.
Not really trying to fool you,
not going to find the one
passage of one poet that happens
to look like another poet.
That is not what we
are interested in,
we are interested again in
the rhetoric of exemplarity
so we are trying to give you
exemplary moments to look at.
We will ask you to
identify 10 out of 12.
There is no extra credit.
You may answer all 12 and
we will take your best 10.
So do not worry if you answer
12 and you miss two of them,
we will not hold
that against you,
unless they are really,
really stupid.
[ Laughter ]
Then in that case, we
will just make a note
on a secret special grade books
and say okay this is
just clearly evidence
of moronic behavior,
no 10 out of 12,
we will pick your best 10.
And then we will ask you to
choose four of those passages
and this is the real meat of the
exam, take four of those things
and talk about them and
we will want you to talk
about them guess what, in ways
that will pay attention to style
and form on the one hand
and thematic and other forms
of content on the other.
We are really interested
in the way
in which these things
go together.
I will list them for you in
three different sections.
It says a) comment on the
rhetorical techniques used
in the passage, paying attention
to such matters as diction,
rhythm, rhyme scheme, scantions,
figure of language
is appropriate, form,
literary in term stuff.
Then comment on the ways
in which the passage dramatizes
a major theme of the text
from which it comes, okay.
So if you get a passage
from Emerson's nature,
you will be wanting
to talk about the ways
in which it uses
those formal things
that you have just identified
in order to talk about
or just more largely
just to talk
about how this passage
gets at something.
You might think of it this way,
why is this an exemplary passage
from nature, for example.
And then we ask you to compare
the treatment of the theme
that you have identified
there to its treatment
in another text by
another author.
So nature, who Emerson
thinks nature is great,
Bradford really thinks
it is not.
That would be an example,
but you can't just say that.
I need a few more
sentences really showing me
that you can think about
what is going on in Bradford.
For example, he invokes
the howling wilderness
or he invokes the native
Americans before he has even
met them.
That would give me refer
to specific moments.
You don't have to quote
them, but just point
to specific moments, so
that we know you have read
and thought about the text.
And if you have world enough
and time, you would be able
to expound eloquently at great
length, but this is shorthand.
Okay, any questions?
Is there an extra
credit, there might be,
but you shouldn't
worry about it.
okay, if you want to worry
about it, I am not interested
in dates per se, but I
am interested in the fact
that certain writers come
before other writers,
certain texts came
before other texts.
So I am interested
kind of in sequence,
you need to know
something about sequence,
so you know who influenced
who and what [inaudible].
Okay, so words to the wise.
Any questions, yes?
>> [Inaudible ]
>> Yes, it is true, it
will be
up tonight at say 9 o'clock.
I will even send them all to
you, so make sure I will have
to send them separately.
Apparently people have
trouble when I send more
than one document via
blackboard, so I will send them
in separate messages, okay.
The terms will probably come
from there, so you might want
to just have a gander.
Sorry that I have been
a little bit slow,
I have been changing
things around so
that what I wrote before doesn't
apply and then I have to go
and do it and they pile up and
you know the way it goes, right.
Alright, any other questions?
>> [Inaudible ]
>> Remember this was boot
camp, I am actually feeling
like I am taking it easy
on everybody this
year, but alright fine.
Try to get here early, I mean
my exams in this course are long
and they are going to make
your hand hurt and you may want
to build an extra blwoing
on my hand time or whatever,
just try to get in here early.
We are a little crowded.
I have decided not to
go for another room
so we can have double seating,
but that always confuses people
and people don't show up.
>> Alright let's do some
work, this is Emerson
from a degara-type [ph]
in the 50s I think.
Now I am going to start with
a way, one of the things
that you have probably gathered
is that I am kind of interested
in the way in which
cultural forms, ideas,
figures get transmitted
through time, right.
So we have already
talked about kind
of contemporary appropriations
of some of the ideas
that we have been
thinking about.
So how Winthrope is appropriated
by Ronald Reagan for example,
it is a very showy example of
how cultural forms can change
and although ultimately
when we get
to the Scarlett Letter
we will see that is what
that book is fundamentally
about in many respects.
How do you try to
script something
and then have that
script go awry.
Once you put a cultural
symbol out there,
once you write a book, how
can you control the meanings?
I want to suggest to
you that Hawthorne knows
that you can't control
those meanings.
You know you are a writer,
you write with an eye toward
a horizon of expectations,
but it in an exact science.
You may intend to meet
it head on and find
that there is something about
that horizon that is changed
and your book will
not have the reception
that you thought it would
and that can be good or bad.
Make the movie you want to
make, don't do any prescreening,
just make it, make it Indie,
do what you want and who knows,
you might win best picture,
usually it doesn't and the fact
that I don't know it made 20
million dollars usually is a
problem, but maybe not
anymore, so anyway,
horizon of expectations,
right, okay.
So I want to talk about a
moment of Emerson's reception
that comes from around
the time of Reagan,
because you might imagine
that Reaganism with its stress
on individualism and
Emerson would go together,
although Reagan I guess maybe
Emerson wasn't Christian enough
for Reagan or something,
his speech writers didn't
tend to ever invoke him.
But in the fall of 1988,
the Reebok corporation ran
an advertising campaign,
which has become kind
of infamous among people
who study these sorts of things.
It was based on the slogan,
Reeboks let you be you, okay.
Reeboks let you be you and
the television commercials
that spearheaded this
campaign were shot
in bright primary colors over
a soundtrack of tango music
and there were brief scenes,
each one had a spoken caption
that came from Emerson's
self reliance.
So it was meant to dramatize
kind of idiosyncratic behavior
that was nevertheless
linked to individualism,
so thinks like who said it
would be a man most be a
non-conformist, a foolish
consistency is the hob-goblin
of little minds, to be great
is to be misunderstood.
I think there were 10 themes
in the long commercial
and 10 captions.
And for years, I had this on
some videotape that I was trying
to rustle up and I
probably taped Star Trek:
the Next Generation over
it or something like that.
in any case, it is now on
You Tube, we love You Tube.
So I am going to show
it to you, I hope.
All things being equal,
you will get a sense
of well let me just
show it to you.
[ Playing video]
[ Laughter ]
Apparently people found this
campaign somewhat enigmatic.
They may not have
recognized, anyway,
there is a whole bunch of them.
So if you like these things,
they are kind of cute.
I will post a link and actually
I might even post the actual
thingamajig on my blog.
Nevertheless, we have it
now, so fine where were we?
So Emerson right, so that ad
campaign is using Emerson,
the quintessential prophet
of American self-reliance
or as we would say
individualism to sell sneakers.
So now this ad campaign actually
raised the heckles of an editor
at the Daily Newspaper where
Emerson had gone to college.
The Harvard Crimson
ran an opinion piece
that was entitled
stomping on individualism
that deplored the
appropriation of the work
of the man whose
name that adorns
that universities
philosophy's building.
Emerson Hall is where they
teach philosophy at Harvard.
Although interestingly,
they rarely teach Emerson
in Emerson Hall, I mean
certainly back in the day,
there was an oddball philosopher
who was interested in aesthetics
and literature, one
of those types.
His name was Stanley Covell
and he taught Emerson,
but for the most part Emerson
has had a kind of renaissance
since this time, but even
still people regard him
in professional philosophy
departments,
they regard Emerson
with suspicion.
I don't think he
is on any syllabus
that gets taught here at NYU.
He is just not analytical
philosophy at all
and I think we will
try to understand why.
Although it was commonplace
to say at the turn
of the 20th century that Emerson
was the America's greatest
philosopher, in the
first Cambridge history
of American literature
from about 1917
that is how he is called.
He is denoted as
America's great philosopher,
so something has happened to
the disciplined philosopher.
You might say the
horizon of expectations
for what constitutes legitimate
academic philosophy has changed.
Okay in any case, this
editorial writer deplored the
appropriation of Emerson's work.
And she wrote this, the
post modern randomness
of the ads is meant to stress
individuality and uniqueness,
as does Emerson's philosophy,
individuality and uniqueness.
But she complains, the ads
distort that philosophy
by implying that Emerson's
self reliance can be found
in of all things, sneakers.
And she describes Emerson
as the quintessential
American philosopher,
which as I said is
a dispute claim
in many philosophy
departments and she points
out that the campaign emphasizes
what she calls the crucial
American dialectic of individual
versus community, what we talked
about with Reagan
and with Winthrop.
She argues though
that the ads are based
on a duplicitous
premise, as if they,
she says they definitely
obscure the fact
that buying Reeboks is not
an act of individualism,
but an act of conformity.
Okay, so buying shoes to express
your individuality is especially
mass produced shoes,
made by sweat shops
and whatever is probably
not a legitimate way
to express your individuality
or is it.
I mean what do we
mean by individuals.
Oh by the way though, the
author of this piece went
on to become a screenwriter,
her name is Aileen Brosh,
ring a bell, anybody?
She wrote a movie.
It was celebrated
when it came out,
it even had some
Oscar nominations.
I think it might have even
won the screenwriting award.
It was called the
Devil Wears Prada.
[ Laughter ]
Have you seen the
Devil Wears Prada?
It is good.
Okay, so you refers to Emerson
as the quintessential American
philosopher, right that was
when she was a young tyke, about
your age, extolling the virtues
of some kind of authentic
American individualism,
as if there were such a thing
and sneering at conformity.
Okay, so individualism, not
conformity and I would suggest
to you that places her
and the Crimson editorial
that she writes within the
kind of main line thinking
of American political
and cultural philosophy
that has dominated American
culture since at least Emerson,
but probably we should
go back to Franklin
and we should see glimmerings of
it all the way back to something
like Winthrop that dynamic of
individual versus community.
How are we going to harness
the individual's energies
that Winthrop is
trying to work with?
What I want to suggest
to you therefore
from what we have seen already
is that what she misses is
that individualism
and conformity
or let's call it community
are inextricably linked.
And what is at stake really
is the link that you are going
to make, how are you
going to depict that link.
Remember Emerson is going
to follow Franklin in trying
to put individual first
and society second.
Winthrop is going to
put community first
and individual second.
Community is supposed
to infold, bind,
remember the ligaments
of Christ's love.
That is going to bind the
individual to society.
So you might say conceptions
of the individual are
probably a necessary conception
to the modern 17th century,
whereas for Franklin and then
for Emerson society itself
is the necessary contention.
It is a second order construct.
I will talk a little
bit more about this.
It is a second order construct
kind of necessary evil, right.
So that is what we want
to be thinking about.
Did you notice the
word individualism
in your reading of
Emerson for today?
Anybody? I would hope not,
because it is not there.
It is not available for him
for use, it is such a new term.
It is this idea that the
individual has an optimum
and primary reality,
society is a second order
derived construct.
This idea is really new at the
beginning of the 19th century,
but it is becoming a
kind of Bedrock principal
of American liberalism or of
liberalism more generally,
but it is so new that there
isn't actually a word for it
and it probably comes into
American usage when democracy
in America is translated for
an American audience in 1844,
oh no 41 was the first
time it was published
in the United States.
And Tocqueville here
in the second volume,
you know about Democracy
in America right,
Alexis de Tocqueville comes
in the 30s and he looks around
and he goes on kind
of a long tour.
He is obstensibly supposed to
study I think the prison systems
as a source, but he starts
generalizing out and broadening
out and he is looking
to understand what he
sees to be the future.
The enlightenment has taken
hold, democracy is what is going
to be the form of culture.
There are some people who
comment on Tocqueville
as saying he is actually
very sympathetic still
to the old Aristocracy,
the old regime
and therefore he is trying
to look for grounds of hope
for those who are
still interested
in [inaudible] structures,
where can we find the vestiges
of Aristocracy in the United
States and that is part
of what he keys on in
those particular moments,
but he really thinks that
democracy is the wave
of the future and
with it a number
of other concepts
that go with it.
individualism is one of them,
so he says it is a word recently
coined to express a new idea.
Our fathers he says
only knew about egoism,
some translate it egotism.
The translator of that first
American edition writes a foot
note in which he apologizes.
I adopt the expression
of the original,
however strange it may seem to
an English ear, because I know
of English word exactly
equivalent
to the expression, right.
It is a brand new word.
It is so new that
Emerson doesn't have it
in self-reliance.
He doesn't have it to use.
In fact, the first time this
is why I was thinking 44.
When he publishes the
series of essays in 42,
it is not in current usage.
By the time he gets to 1844
and publishes an essay
called New England Reformers,
he does have the term
individualism available, right.
So this is part of this new
intellectual technology.
This is how Tocqueville
defines individualism.
He calls it a calm and
considered feeling,
which exposes each citizen to
isolate himself from the masses
of his fellows and
withdraw into the circle
of his family and friends.
With this little society
formed to his taste,
he gladly leaves a greater
society to look after himself.
So there is a difference between
individualism and egotism
or egoism, it is not
only self centeredness.
In fact, it isn't
primarily that,
it is a way of approaching
society that involves isolation
from the mass and it
is a social concept,
even in Tocqueville's terms,
because you gather a close
community around you,
your family maybe some of your
friends and then you start
to look after yourself.
And he thinks this is a
problem, egoism he says springs
from a blind instinct,
while individualism is based
on misguided judgment rather
than depraved feeling.
But in the end, they boil
down to the same thing.
Egoism sterilizes the seed of
every virtue, individualism
at first only dams the
spring of public virtues,
but in the long run
he says it attacks
and destroys all the others too
and finally merges in egoism.
So ultimately, you
want to say they boil
down to the same thing.
Finally, one of the things
he is talking about in terms
of Aristocracy is he
thinks about the ways
in which this is a new
phenomenon and one of the things
that he says you might think
about how this is compatible
with the argument that
Winthrop makes at the beginning
of a model in Christian
charity about hierarchy is
that in Aristocratic society is
there was a hierarchy and a set
of obligations and everybody
knew who owed what to whom.
Democracy changes that.
He says democracy breaks
the chain, frees each link
and thus it's socially
quality spread through out more
and more people who, though
neither rich nor powerful enough
to have much hold over
others, have gained
or kept enough wealth and
enough understanding to look
after their own needs.
Such folk owe no man anything
and hardly expect
anything from anyone.
They form the habit of
thinking of themselves,
again that word, in isolation.
And imagine that their whole
destiny is in their own hands.
I think leave the idea
of the community behind.
Each man, therefore he says,
is forever thrown
back on himself alone.
And there is danger
that he may be shut
up in the solitude
of his own heart.
Dramatic description.
And he probably sees this
as exactly the problem
that he's talking about.
Right? Emerson's favorite
lines from Self Alliance.
To believe your own thought,
to believe that what is true
for you in your private
heart is true
for all men, that is genius.
Speaker [inaudible] conviction,
and it shall be the universal
sense for the in most
in due time becomes
the out most.
And our first thought
is rendered back to us
by the trumpets of
the last judgment.
This is what I'm thinking that
you will probably be thinking.
In those moments when
you don't say something,
when I ask a question, and then
somebody else says exactly the
same thing that you
were thinking.
Emerson says believe
in yourself,
reverence yourself, right.
Speak up, speak out.
Your first thought is
probably the right thought.
And if you change
your mind tomorrow,
we'll talk about this later on,
your first thought tomorrow is
the right thought for tomorrow,
even if it contradicted
your first thought today.
But we'll get to that.
This would drive Topfield
[assumed spelling] nuts.
Right. I mean this is
exactly the kind of problem
that he's pointing to.
Think that what's true for you
is every, is true of everybody.
Again you hold your
destiny in your own hand.
But you know what?
Almost immediately in the
context of U.S. discourse,
[inaudible] insight and
I think it is an insight
into the way Democratic
societies work,
was immediately appropriated
and given a new meaning.
Right. So in a very
early review,
or a very early piece
that's related,
even precedes Topfield's
own publication
of the second volume.
There's an anonymous piece
of the Democratic
Review that writes this.
The history of humanity is
the record of a grand march,
at all times leading
to one point.
The ultimate perfection of man.
The course of civilization is
the progress of man from a state
of savage individualism to that
of individualism more
elevated, moral and refined.
Right. So we want to
move from the state
of nature's version
of, from individualism
to produce societies that are
going to cultivate a new kind
of individualism
that can be elevated,
moral, refined, civilized.
And Emerson's thinking in
this period, you might say,
has a lot of affinities
with that kind of belief.
This is a journal
entry from 1833.
Democracy, freedom has its
roots in the sacred truth
that every man have in
him that define reason,
or that all men are
created capable of so doing.
That is the equality and the
only equality of all men.
To this truth we local me say,
reference thyself,
be true to thyself.
Today Emerson would
probably have a blog.
But one of the things that he
did was cultivated the habit
of keeping a journal constantly.
And he drew on these
journal entries
for the lecture the public
performances that he gave.
Right. So that's
one of the things
to understand a little bit.
We'll say more about this.
But one of the things
about, what's weird
about Emerson's writing
is that it almost seems
like greatest hits
of my journal.
Like where'd I get, you
know, if you had God,
who knows what would
have happened
if he had had word processing
and it was easier to
synthesize things.
Maybe he still wouldn't
have done it.
But I mean you know
the idea of going
through his journal entries and
thinking you know like what's,
what have I been thinking
about the individual?
And pulling these
things together.
It's often times that you
get the paragraphs have kind
of leaps of thought.
They don't necessarily
have smooth
philosophical transitions.
They don't seem argued.
It's kind of like insight
after insight after insight.
But you can see that that's
kind of what he's interested in.
He's interested in
the idea of revelation
which he believes the
enlightenment holds strains
of enlightenment philosophy,
have unjustly de-emphasized.
That's one of the
important things
to understand about Emerson.
So who so would be a man
must be a nonconformist.
He who would gather a mortal
palms must not be hindered
by the name of goodness, but
must explore if it be goodness.
Does that remind you of
anybody that we've read?
Must not be hindered by
the name of goodness,
but must explore
if it be goodness.
Does that sound.
Does that remind
you of anything?
If we were looking for an
antecedent to this thought,
where would we find it?
[ Silence ]
So on Wednesday if there's
a passage from Emerson
and it's not appropriate
to compare it to Bradford,
you might want to think about
comparing it to this guy.
Might remember that moment when
he's talking about he doesn't,
doesn't believe that you
should do things from precept.
But on the other hand he
thinks it's probably good,
there's probably good sense
behind many of the precepts.
He wants to test those
precepts out for himself.
He's probably going
to do, for example,
what the preacher
would tell him to do.
But he's not going to do it
because the preacher
told him to do it.
Emerson you might say he's
taking that slightly farther.
Right. Who so would be a
man, must be a nonconformist.
He who would gather immortal
palms must not be hindered even
by the name of goodness.
I'll interpolate the even.
Even by the name of goodness.
But must explore
the be goodness.
Just because they say
it's good, I can think.
And remember this idea here,
right, the equality of men is
that everyman hath in
him the divine reason.
All right.
So we're seeing that Emerson is
taking off from those strains
of enlightened philosophy
that say reason is a
faculty that God gave us.
And we need to use it.
Emerson goes further.
There's a lot of
references to the soul in all
of the writings that
you looked at.
He thinks that everybody's
soul is almost
like a direct communication
line to the divine.
That we all have some
of the God stuff in us.
Sometimes he'll call it the
soul, sometimes he'll think
of it as reason for him to
kind of interconnect it.
You would be doing an
injustice to what is divine
in you to mistrust yourself.
And if you were going
to subscribe
to that total depravity
thing, oh come on.
How can having part of, how
can having a soul be squared
with the idea of
total depravity?
See that's the thing
about Emerson, he's,
he's not interested in
those kinds of arguments
about the fall and
nature of man.
And you'll see that he makes
references to the fall of man.
But the references that
he makes to the fall
of man are completely
compatible with the kind
of thinking that we saw in Cant.
Right. That enlightenment is
the process of arising, of,
of moving out of your own
self incurred immaturity.
When you don't dare
to think for yourself.
Cant says dare to be
wise, Emerson would agree.
And that's because
Emerson frankly is a kind
of American [inaudible].
Right. So one place to think of
is that Emerson is inheriting
from Franklin, and maybe even
moving a little bit further.
I would suggest to you
that the difference
between these two lies in their
attitudes towards religion.
Right. Remember what
we talked about.
Edwards and Franklin, sat
on a cusp between Calvinism
or New England Congregationalism
and the Enlightenment.
Edwards is trying to find a way
to manage the new enlightenment
technology to make it compatible
with the old religion.
Franklin is trying to
wait a minimize the damage
that thinking along the lines
of the old religion can do
to keep us from moving forward.
So he really is trying
to deemphasize religion.
Think back to that passage
when he talks about providence,
or a guardian angel, or
some unexpected chance.
All of these things
might have saved me
from what would have gone
wrong you would expect
from my want of religion.
Right. For him they're
all equal.
Providence, which is destiny
and forward, and things being
for ordained for chance.
Who knows.
And by virtue of putting
those things together
in the same sentence, not
along as if they were co-equal,
is a radical destabilization
of the idea of providence.
For Emerson you might say
enlightenment is going to far.
Emerson is a Unitarian.
So that is, we might say it's
an early 19th Century descendent
of New England
Congregationalism.
But it is a far more
liberal version
of that in the 19th Century.
Right. You want to
say that Calvinism
as we've seen it stresses
overall Christ love as expressed
through his sacrifice
on the cross.
And it comes with it, it comes
with this idea of the depravity
of human kind, and the
necessity of God's intervention
in order for us to be saved.
We don't deserve anything.
There is no way for human beings
to perfect themselves except
through the reception
of God's grace
which God gives as he sees fit.
Emerson and the Unitarians
stress not the death of Christ,
but the life and
teachings of Christ.
So it isn't Christ's death
that is the model finally
of his love, but his life.
The things that he teaches.
The example that he
sets of good behavior.
Right. And Emerson
enters Harvard College,
which at the time
is, he's the second
of his brothers to
attend the school.
It's still a place where
he, it's still a place
where he was expected
probably to become a minister.
He wasn't, it might
make you happy to know,
wasn't a particularly
good student at Harvard.
So you can be a great
intellectual
and not necessarily be a
good student in college,
although I wouldn't
recommend it.
He did win prizes for writing.
Including one of which I,
myself, am particularly fond.
It's called The Bowden Prize
for Writing, and Emerson was one
of the, the winners of it.
In any case, he leaves Harvard
with a suspicion you might say
of organized religion.
So he tries his hand
at school teaching.
He begins to study for the
ministry more seriously at 1825.
And he begins a practice of
keeping journal entries to try
to produce a new
sermon each week.
His father had been a
Unitarian clergyman.
But again, you know, if we think
about this is a progression
from conservative to liberal,
there are certain ways
in which we might say
Emerson is even a further,
a further progression
to more liberal.
Right. Any kind of
organized religion,
even Unitarianism comes to
seem kind of binding to him.
And he has a dispute with
the ministers at Harvard,
and in Boston, about the Lord's,
celebration of the
Lord's Supper.
And that leads him
to be, you know,
banned from Harvard for a while.
But you might say that
the Unitarians become very
interested in lock
in psychology.
The stuff that we, that
also interested Edwards.
Right. And they are
really thinking
about using enlightenment,
thinking as a way
of combating what they thought
of as Calvinist superstition.
They were, therefore, a kind
of liberal denomination.
So you would Emerson through the
rut, well if moving from liberal
to more conservation to liberal.
Emerson would probably
be out here.
And yet, it's more
complicated than that.
Because even while
he finds Unitarianism
which is an enlightenment
influenced version
of New England Congregationalism
as opposed to this,
which is a strongly
Calvinist inflected version.
Emerson thinks that
Franklin's account
of enlightenment
is impoverished.
There is something wrong
with the way the enlightenment
has put so much stress
on both human consciousness
and on materialist,
philosophically materialist
modes of thinking.
Something is missing.
It's not enough.
And that something is what
religion is supposed to do.
So there's a way in which
organized religion is too,
is too strict for him.
But the enlightenment is
too impoverished for him.
He doesn't give you
a full account
of the human life,
human consciousness.
He wants to restore something of
that idea that the central drama
of the human existence
has something to do
with God and spirituality.
He just doesn't find any
account of it that he's read
to be fully satisfactory.
So there's a way in which I
want you to see these essays
as a kind of American religion.
This is a kind of
new religious text
and Emerson is part of that.
On the other hand, he is very
much thinking about building
on enlightenment philosophies,
and particularly the kind
of philosophy that we would see
in something like Emanuel Cant.
So his first major philosophical
text is nature from 1836.
And it really, you know,
we, we would identify it as,
as what we would call a piece
of American transcendentalist
thinking.
What I want to suggest to
you is that transcendentalism
in the U.S. does draw on
German idealist philosophy,
the transcendentalism
of Emanuel Cant.
Most, although Cant, Emerson
gets Cant less from Cant
than from the way it was
processed by thinkers
like Coolidge and Carlisle.
Nevertheless Cant is in
the background of it.
And he always says whatever
Emerson's larger project is is
to kind of domesticate Cantient
[assumed spelling] thinking
for American soil.
And one way of, of thinking
about it therefore, is that part
of what he really brings into it
that Cant doesn't have so much,
is the idea of religion
or spirit or revelation.
Okay. Revelation I compatible
with Cantient most think.
But Emerson wants to
stress that further.
So you might say that what
we find is a kind of battle
between European,
Unitarian Epistemology,
so the Unitarian account of the
way that knowledge comes about.
And also lock in psychology.
Right. So there's a sense
in which Unitarian
Epistemology is really,
I probably shouldn't have
written versus up here.
They really kind of go together.
Unitarians believe that
knowledge comes about in part
through the way in which Lock
describes sensory understanding.
Right. That part of what
we, what we, what we come
to understand is what's
written on our senses,
as the first kind of, you know,
sensory perception becomes
the first data that we use.
Then we use reason to,
to, to work on that.
In Emerson's terms,
coming from Coolidge,
he would interpose one
thing in between there.
He would say that
we get sensory data.
We apply our understanding
to it.
But then we finally go and apply
this extra super faculty that's
called reason.
And that's the thing that
sparks some of the design.
So this, there's a trend,
there's a constant, there's a,
you might say a concept that
Emerson is domesticating
from Cant that is something
like a kind of higher reason.
So that's one of the
things that we're seeing.
Transcendentalism in the United
States becomes almost a kind
of quasi-religious movement.
Although, you know,
if you asked somebody
like Thero [assumed spelling]
who is constantly identified
as a, as a transcendentalist
he probably would deny that.
So it's Cant as interpreted
by people
like Cunta, Carlyle
and Coolidge.
This becomes the way in which,
it works its way into Emerson.
And again, understanding
as a first faculty,
but Emerson wants
reason to mean even more
than other enlightenment
thinkers want it to mean.
Reason is somehow going
to be linked to the soul.
All right.
Let's take a look
at some text here.
How about page 1131
in the Norton.
This is the section of nature
that's called Idealism.
And I think this might,
you might get a sense
of what he's talking
about if we look
at the text more closely here.
On page 1131 this is the
first full paragraph.
It appears that motion,
poetry, physical
and intellectual science
and religion all tend
to affect our convictions of the
reality of the external world.
But I own that there
is something ungrateful
and expanding too
curiously the particulars
of the general proposition
that all culture tend
to imbue us with idealism.
Right. I want to focus on this.
We've talked about
idealism a little bit
when we talked about Winthrop.
Idealism is not the idea
that philosophical
idealism is not the idea
that we should pursue
a certain ideal.
Right. It's not the same as,
as good behavior you might say.
It's rather a way of thinking
that presupposes a difference
between appearance and reality.
And remember we talked
about that.
The periods are deeply
suspicious of appearance
in the world for the reasons
that we've outlined that have
to do with their idea of
the fall of human kind.
And they believe that the
world that you can't see,
the invisible church is
in fact the real world.
So they will be classed as
philosophical idealists.
They are interested, I'll
give you these terms now
so you can see them.
They are interested as many
later idealistic philosophers
are in this distinction between
the phenomenal and the nominal.
The phenomenal is the world
of phenomena and matter.
The world that we see.
The nominal is the world of
spirit or ideas or the soul.
It's the world that
we don't see.
Right. So generally speaking,
idealism, philosophical idealism
in Emerson's day maintains
that what is real is
in some sense going to
be this nominal world,
and then it gets even
more complicated.
Because how do you have
access to the nominal world?
Well even if you believe
that you have a soul,
your access is going to
be through your own mind.
So you might say that the first
true philosophical idealist is
somebody that's mentioned
a few pages earlier.
This is page 1126 in the
footnote number three.
It's Bishop Barclay who takes
off from Lock's descriptions
of sensory experience in the
essay on human understanding.
And he says here,
the footnote says
that Emerson uses Bishop George
Barclay as a representation
of the notion that we
can not know ideas,
that we can know ideas only in
the mind and cannot know things,
material things in themselves.
And just to say a little
bit more about this,
Barclay is extending
this to all perception.
And he's arguing that only
sensations or ideas are real.
All right.
I don't want to get
too far into this.
But this is what, this is
the philosophical discourse
that Emerson is inserting
himself into.
And that's what he means
on page 1131 when he says,
he says that a little bit
further on from the part.
So it's the beginning of
the second full paragraph.
It is in fact the view which
reason, both speculative
and practical, that it is
philosophy and virtue take.
That is philosophy
and virtue take.
For seen in the light
of thought,
the world always is phenomenal
and virtue subordinates
it to the mind.
Okay. Then he goes on,
1132, this will start
to become a little
clearer, I think.
When he goes on to the fact
that the, the idea of spirit.
So we've move from, you
might say, in the progression
of chapters in nature,
we've moved from something
that looks like, you
know, the world itself.
To the idea of idealism
and finally
to another chapter
here on spirit.
Take a look at the, one,
two, three, fifth paragraph.
Three problems are put
by nature to the mind.
What is matter?
Whence is it?
And whereto?
The first of these questions
only the ideal theory answers.
Idealism say matter is a
phenomenon and not a substance.
Idealism acquaints us
with the total disparity
between the evidence
of our own being
and the evidence
of the world being.
Right. He says the
idealist would suggest
that we could really
only know ourselves.
We can really only know
what's in our mind.
Because everything
that we see is filtered
through our perceptions.
So our mind is perfect.
The other flaw at best,
we can't really be assured
about it at all.
The other he says is
incapable of any assurance.
The mind is a part of
a nature of things.
The world is a divine dream from
which we may presently awake
to the glories and
certainties of day.
Again. See how he's twisting
that rhetoric of enlightenment
that we've seen in places like,
people like Jonathan Edwards.
Idealism he said is a
hypothesis to account for nature
by other principles than those
of carpentry and chemistry.
And by that, by carpentry
and chemistry and kind
of mathematical view of
the world, he's talking
about materialist philosophy.
So in short, what he's saying
is look idealism is trying
to get us beyond the limitations
of materialist philosophy.
But guess what?
There are limitations to
idealist philosophy as well.
All right.
So that's what's going to move
him into this realm of spirit.
It's in the next sentence.
Yet if it only deny the
existence of matter,
it does not satisfy the
demands of the spirit.
It leaves God out of me.
It leaves me in the splendid
labyrinth of my perceptions
to wander without end.
Right. So look where
he's gotten to.
Materialist philosophy
not enough.
Idealist philosophy okay
that's an improvement.
It says to just a more supple
way about the way in which we,
we understand the world.
It makes us realize that
you know the importance
of our perceptions.
But what guarantees are there
about anything that we think?
I mean you know, everybody
wonders this at times
when I say red is it
really the same thing
that she means when
she says red?
How do we know?
You know how do we know that
we're seeing the same things?
How do I know that we are
not, that I am not actually
at this moment, this is a
famous thought experiment
by Robert Nosick
[assumed spelling] of lay,
who used to teach at Harvard.
It's like, how do I know
that at the very moment,
or how do you know that at this
very moment you're not actually
somewhere in a vast,
call it Mars,
the subject of an experiment
that Martians have plugged
into you and have
simulated your own reality.
But knows it's [inaudible]
thought experiment.
This is before the Matrix.
Anybody see the Matrix?
Matrix One of course.
I actually like two
and three fine.
They missed an opportunity.
We'll talk about
this some other time.
They missed an opportunity by
going all bang, bang, bang.
But, nevertheless, how do you
know that you are not part
of some Martian experiment?
That every single thing you
encounter is an incredibly
elaborate simulation.
That how do you know in
fact that in those terms
that you're not part
of the Matrix?
That's a problem
philosophically, right?
How can you be sure?
Emerson knows.
Emerson is sure.
But what does he need
in order to be sure?
He needs God.
Right? So that's it.
He needs this idea of spirit
because otherwise you're just
wondering around in this maze
of your own, thinking.
What's going to guarantee if,
if you might say it's
a reconfigured version
of providence.
Right. If it only denied
the existence of matter,
it doesn't satisfy the
demands of the spirit.
It leaves God out of me.
It leaves me in the
splendid labyrinth
of my perceptions t
wander without end.
Then the heart resisted
because it balks the affections
and design substantive
being to men and women.
Okay. So this is an expression
of Emerson's transcendentalism.
He's telling us that
no religion,
or philosophical system,
and by this he's, you know,
placing a lot of
enlightenment theories
in this, into this idea.
That places God outside
of the self is going
to be acceptable to him.
God is inside.
Truth of reason.
Through the soul.
And that gives you a guarantee
that you are not wandering only
in the labyrinth
of your own mind.
Right. So what are the
things that we want to say is
that Franklin, and others,
are trying to get the
revelation out of philosophy.
You look at Brown's
novel, you're like wow,
revelation there is
unreliable at best.
And sometimes it's, you know,
conversion to the dark side.
Right. You got to
start killing panthers
and eating the reeking
fibers of the, okay.
I mean that's not
necessarily the kind
of version we're all hoping for.
Emerson says, wait a minute.
I want to, I want to, I want
to bring back revelation.
Emerson is fundamentally
more optimistic you might say
than other romantic writers
that we've started to look
at about human nature.
And he's more optimistic
about human nature
than the Calvinist were.
He, there's often a word
that's associated with him.
It's the [inaudible] mood.
Emerson and he doesn't
mean optimistic.
But Emerson is interested in the
kind of language and the way,
the language of possibility.
He's interested in
process as we'll see.
Okay. Before we look a little
bit more closely at nature,
I do want to say something
about Emerson's style of writing
which you might find
disturbing or even annoying.
So I want, I've started
to talk about this.
Emerson was part of what
was called a lyses movement.
So it means he gave,
he got you know,
communities were interested
in self improvement.
Today we have book groups.
Then people would spoil,
would pool their monies
together and hire a speaker.
And come and give
lectures on subjects.
Of course philosophy you'd hire
Emerson to come and he'd speak
to you in a lyceum, in an
auditorium and you would listen
and you'd have kind of these
edification, these socially,
you know, called
intellectually edifying moments.
Fine. Emerson actually tried
to make a career out of this.
And for 25 years, after the
death of his first wife,
and he goes to Europe,
he comes back.
He's part of this
lyceum circuit.
So you might say that
instead of giving sermons,
he's now giving public lectures.
But the lectures take a
slightly sermonic form.
He's often able to
choose his own topics.
But always there's
a kind of doctrine
that he is trying to promote.
But I wanted to say
something about this style.
Again he's picking out nuggets
of thinking from his journals.
He's also thinking a
little bit on his feet
as he writes these things.
And he writes them up and he
puts them into essay form.
But the essays that
we have bear some
of the hallmarks
of oral delivery.
Especially in this leaping
from one idea to another.
Or an almost a sometimes
transcendental
or associative train of thought,
rather what we might think
of as something that's
strictly logical or syllogistic.
Or if you want to say, it's
a different kind of logic.
It's an associative
kind of logic.
Let's take a look at page
1168 and I'll give you a,
a famous passage that kind
of embodies what it is
that I'm talking about here.
[ Sounds of pages turning ]
Again, one of the things
about Emerson is he's
asking you to think anew.
And sometimes the
price of thinking anew,
and this is why I think
that Emerson is, is closed.
He makes an approach to
what we might call a kind
of cosmopolitan mode of thinking
that stresses the importance
of understanding fablism.
At the top of 1168, he's
worried about all the things
that we thought before.
Why should you keep your
head over your shoulder?
Why drag about this monstrous
corpse of your memory,
lest you contradict
some what you have saved
in this or that public place.
Suppose you should
contradict yourself.
What then?
It seems to be a
rule of wisdom never
to rely on your memory alone.
Scarcely even on acts of pure
memory will bring the past
for judgment into the
thousand eyed present
to live ever in a new day.
Trust your emotion.
In your metaphysics you've
denied personality to the deity,
yet when the devote
motions of the soul come,
yield to the hardened life,
though they should clothes
God with sharpen color.
Leave your theory as Joseph his
coat, in the hand of the harlot.
And flee. And then this
is the famous passage.
As foolish consistency is the
hob gobble of little minds.
Adored by little statesmen
and philosophers and divine.
Little ones.
With consistency, a great
soul has simply nothing to do.
He may as well concern himself
with his shadow on the wall.
Out upon your guarded lips.
Sew them up in the
pack for a dew,
else if you would be a man
speak what you think today,
in words as hard
as cannon balls,
and tomorrow speak what tomorrow
thinks in hard words again,
though it contradict
everything that you say today.
Ah, the next claimed
the angel ladies,
you shall be sure
to be misunderstood.
Misunderstood?
It's a right fool's
word, Emerson says.
It's so bad then to
be misunderstood?
[Inaudible] was misunderstood,
and Socrates and Jesus
and Luther and [inaudible]
and Galileo, and Newton.
And every pure and wise
spirit that ever took flesh.
To be great is to
be misunderstood.
Anyway [inaudible] go back and
think of the model of Jesus
in the, in the New Testament.
Jesus speaks how?
How does he teach?
It's a form that Jesus uses.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Yeah he uses a parable.
Why does Jesus speak
in parables?
Why not just say it?
A new, this is, you
know, we're not.
Just do in two minutes what
theologians spent careers
and what not.
People have probably
been burnt for less.
But, but why speak in parables?
Why not just say it plainly?
Well if you're interested
in this, it's different
in the different gospels.
I mean one, one thing
you would say appeal to,
well it's story telling.
Draws you in to understand.
People can link to
their experience.
They understand and
then they say oh.
Rather than just a dry precept.
You illustrate with a story.
But there's a moment in Mark,
this is fascinating
for those of you.
You go to Mark, and he does
this first bit of parables
and then he explains the
parables not to his audience
but to his disciples so
that the disciples kind
of have an inside knowledge.
It's like they get
the cliff notes.
And he says, but when we speak
outside, we'll speak open,
when we speak other than openly.
It's an interesting thing.
There's a certain way in which
Jesus is thereby leaving himself
open to being misunderstood.
And you could potentially
argue that there's a whole lot
of misunderstanding in the way
that Christianity
becomes institutionalized
so that somehow the
religion that's supposed
to be turn the other check, the
religion of charity, of humility
and humbleness, became, well
the great institutionalized
structures that the
churches became that were all
about pomp and circumstance.
And I mean today
sometimes may lose track
of their, their mission.
In any case, Emerson
has good presence
for thinking about this.
But that's what he thinks.
Emerson says to be great
is to be misunderstood.
He's willing to take the chance.
He's willing to contradict
himself.
So I want you to understand
that one of the things
that Emerson does, typically,
his mode of faking is
to take what would seem
to be a kind of liability
and turn it to his advantage.
A French critic named Maurice
Ganough [assumed spelling],
published a very big study that
was called An Uneasy Solitude.
And he said this, a
French mind, however open
or unprejudiced it might be,
is hardly ever comfortable
with Emerson's thought.
Fragmentary in the extreme, weak
in structure, even when striving
for order, fertile
in contradictions
and second thoughts
and non-[inaudible]
and so indifferent
to logical rigor
as to seem positively unsound.
Emerson, this guy Ganough
says was no Pascal.
And therefore, he says, one
has to try to read Emerson
with a virgin mind, so to
speak, following the movement
of his thought, experiences the
alteration of the inward tides
if one wants to catch the
original quality of the work.
And you can see that's why it
doesn't look like philosopher,
philosophy to most
professional philosophers.
It looks like something else.
Think of that it's a
good metaphor I think.
Title. It's fragmentary.
It jumps. You'll eventually see
when you read Whitman's
poetry why Emerson was
such an inspiration.
Because Whitman also has
a kind of ebb and flow
in his lines of poetry.
It's almost like Whitman does to
poetic form in terms of opening
up the constraints of,
Brian starts opening
up the constraints.
Whitman blows them open.
And Emerson is one of people's
who serves as his kind of guru.
Quite literally.
He hears Emerson
speak about the poet.
We'll read that essay
when we do Whitman.
And has his mind completely,
has, is completely transformed.
Take a look then at
page 1172 in the,
later on in, in self alliance.
Emerson writes in the
journal from 1837, you know,
can I now concede the
universe without contradiction?
And his answer is no basically.
But that's not going to
be a liability for him.
He embraces contradiction.
And he embraces contradiction
because he thinks it's a
crucial part of process
of what we might call the
process of enlightenment
or spiritual awakening, or you
know learning to use the reason,
or Emerson would probably say
learning to be self reliant.
Okay. So look at
the bottom of 1172.
Life only avails,
not the having lived.
Power ceases in the
instant of repose.
It resides in the moment
of transition from a past
to a new state in the
shooting of the gulf,
the darting to an aim.
This one fact the world
hates, that the soul becomes.
For that forever degrades
the past, turns all riches
to poverty, all reputation
to a shame.
[Inaudible] saint with
the rogue shows Jesus
and Judas equally aside.
Why then do we pray
to self reliance?
Inasmuch as the soul is
present there will be power not
confidence, but agent.
So talk of reliance is a poor
external way of speaking.
Speak rather of that
which relies,
because it works, and it is.
So I want you to
remember those words.
Power ceases in the
instant of repose.
It's almost like a kind of
shark like view of power.
It consists of a
darting to an aim.
The cross.
See that's why I think
there's almost a kind
of cosmopolitan thinker.
He's thinking about
bridging gaps.
Not closing them necessarily.
But trying to think
about the ways
in which you might
forward gulfs of thought.
Make unlike things have a
connection to one another.
And one of the things you
might say about Emerson is
that what links all of
this together is the sense
that you get in his
writings of his own mind.
I mean his mind is what unifies
all of these things together.
And therefore his writing
becomes an almost kind
of object lesson in how you too
can make sense of contradiction
in the world around you.
Not by listening
to everybody else.
But by thinking for yourself.
Trusting yourself.
Being the thing that unifies.
Different modes of thinking.
Different kinds of ideas.
Different kinds of
contradictions.
All right.
So that's, I just wanted
you guys to see that as kind
of a bedrock Emersonian concept.
This idea of contradiction.
It's going to be problematic,
and then we can start
to argue about it.
Well wait a minute.
You just said contradiction.
But what does it mean to
say that he, isn't he kind
of unifying and therefore
subsuming contradiction?
And yes. So there's almost
a kind of contradiction
in what I just said about
his using contradiction,
which I think Emerson
would be very happy about.
So let's go back to Nature.
1836, this is page 1110.
And again, you'll start to
see now that having talked
about some of these things and
the trajectory of his thinking,
you'll start to see what he's
up to in this book, Nature.
[ Sounds of pages turning ]
The epigraph comes
from Plotinus.
Nature is but an image
or imitation of wisdom.
The last thing of the soul.
Nature being a thing
which doeth only do
and not know, but not know.
Now Plotinus is interesting for
Emerson because Plotinus is a,
is thought of as one of the
originary neo platonic thinkers.
Plotinus is also important
for people like Winthrop.
Remember I talked to you a
little bit about the ways
in which the kinds of philosophy
that would be identified
as platonic would be idealistic,
as opposed to Artostilian
materialistic philosophy.
That's good for Puritans
insofar as Plato.
Things that the real
things or ideas.
Not the particular
manifestation of the table,
but the idea of the table.
It's that idea that's real.
Puritans can work with that.
But part of what enables them
to work with that is Plotinus
who starts to translate
Plato's thought
into a Christian context.
Okay. He's important
for Emerson as well.
So immediately Emerson
is using the epigraph
to signal his philosophical
relationships.
Establish his inability and
also genealogy of thinking.
Our age is retrospective.
It builds the cepelcurves
[assumed spelling]
of the fathers.
The tombs of the fathers.
It writes biographies,
histories, and criticism.
And remember, what do you
think about those genres?
Remember isn't that what I said
was exactly the modes of what,
if we had to call
something literary
in the 17th Century,
it would be genres.
The Bible sure, and then
biographies, histories.
A little bit of criticism
perhaps.
The foregoing generations,
Emerson writes, beheld God
and nature face to face.
We see through their eyes.
Why should we not we also
enjoy an original relation
to the universe?
Why should not we have
a poetry and philosophy
of insight and not of tradition?
And a religion by
revelation to us
and not the history of theirs.
Right? Where have all
the miracles gone?
How come they were just then?
Aren't there miracles
going on now?
How come we don't get any?
Emerson probably is trying
to suggest to you that we do,
but we're not able
to notice them.
We've lost faith in them.
We need them.
And [inaudible] for a season
and nature who's floods
of life stream around and
through us and invite us
by the powers they supply to
act in proportion to nature,
why should we grope among
the dry bones of the past?
Put the living generation
into masquerade
out of its faded wardrobe.
Now he's talking about
thought in philosophies.
These other genres,
biographies, history, criticism.
Right. We need new.
New stuff for the new age.
The sun shines today
also, not just on them.
We can have revelation too.
There is more wool and
flax in the fields.
There are new lands,
new men, new thoughts,
let us demand our own works
and laws and worships.
Right. So one of the
things that you would say
about Emerson is he is, he is
adopting this idea that is,
that is a common place.
That we are belated.
We've come late into the world.
And what Emerson will say is,
there's the fall
of man right there.
It's the fact that we are bound
to what other people
have thought.
We don't think for ourselves.
We don't think the way
they used to think.
We don't experience the
world the way they used
to experience the world.
We need to do that.
And for him the way is
through self reliance.
And here you, just look at the
boundless faith in human nature
that seems to be here
in these passages.
Going on. Undoubtedly we
have no questions to ask
which are unanswerable.
We must trust the perfection
of the creation so far
as to believe that
whatever curiosity,
the order of things has
awakened in our minds,
the order of things can satisfy.
You have to imagine that, that
one of the things that Emerson
and many of the other writers
of this period are thinking
about is the fact
that Champollion has deciphered
Egyptian hieroglyphics
very recently.
It's kind of a big discovery.
These things that were
completely mysterious now turn
out to be a language you
can, it gives them hope.
The Rosetta Stone, right.
In which certain hieroglyphics
were translated to Greek
and we could read that.
So we were able to
understand it.
Emerson uses, this is an example
of the new way of thinking
that the 19th Century
is making available.
Every man's condition is a
solution and hieroglyphic
to those inquires he would put.
He acts in his life before
he apprehends it as truth.
In like manner, nature
is already in its forms
and tendencies describing
its own design.
All right you can see how this
is linked to, what an extension
of that kind of deism
that I described with,
deism that I described
with Franklin.
Right. The idea that, that
we deduce the, in the,
the existence of God by looking
at manifestations of what has
to be intention in,
in the world.
Emerson says this, let us
interrogate the great apparition
of signs so brief
peacefully around us.
Let us inquire to
what end is nature.
So that's where he's
starting off.
But I want you to understand,
this is, is taking off
from natural philosophy,
but it's really an
inquiry into the self.
This is a treatise that paves
the way for the later thinking
about self reliance and
modes of being of reliance.
So you see not only
in that essay,
but in the American
scholar and other things
that we're going to
be reading of his.
All science is one aim.
Namely to find a
theory of nature.
We have theories of races and
the functions, but scarcely
yet a remote approximation
to an idea of creation.
We are now so far from
the road to truth,
but religious teachers'
dispute and hate each other,
a speculative manner
esteemed unsound frivolous.
But to a sound judgment the
most abstract truth is the
most practical.
Whenever a true theory appears,
it will be its own evidence.
Its test is that it will
explain all phenomena.
Now many are thought not only
unexplained, but inexplicable
as language sleep,
dreams, beast, sex.
I mean put this in
the context of Brown.
Right. Emerson believes that
things like sleep walking,
the unconscious give us
time, give the world time,
we'll be able to answer
these kinds of questions.
He does not, in other words,
believe that there's some kind
of flaw in human psychology,
human consciousness,
or human reason.
We just don't know enough yet.
That will be his reply.
So you might say, the gothic.
Emerson is an absolutely
non-gothic thinker.
Although as we'll see, most
likely after the break, that,
that he has a gothic
moment or two.
But then he turns around
and makes a reaffirmation
of his individualistic
philosophy.
All right.
Here's a tough paragraph.
Let's take a look at it.
Philosophically considered
the universe is composed
of nature and the soul.
Strictly speaking therefore,
all that is separate from us,
all which philosophy
distinguishes as the not me,
that is both nature
and art, all other men
in my own body must be
ranked under the name nature.
In a new way, the valleys
of nature and casting up,
there's some actually use
the word in both senses.
In its common and in its
philosophical import.
Much the way we've been talking
about materialism or idealism.
An inquiry so general
as our present one,
the inaccuracy is not material.
No confusion of thought
will occur.
Nature in the common sense
refers to essences unchanged
by man, space, the art, the
air, the river, the leaves.
Art is applied to the mixture
of his will the same things,
as in a house, a canal,
a statute, a picture.
But his operations taken
together are so insignificant,
a little chipping, baking,
patching, and washing,
that an impression so
grand as that of the world
on the human mind they
do not vary the result.
All right.
There's a couple of important
things to, to note in there.
For one thing, what the
hell is he talking about?
What is nature in
the philosophical,
what counts as nature
in the philosophical
definition that he's invoking?
Yeah.
>> Everything that's not
[inaudible] is that [inaudible].
>> Okay. Everything,
that's good.
Everything that is not
his consciousness then
in some sense his
consciousness can't change
or that he takes
as a kind of given.
Including what?
Surprisingly at the very
end of the paragraph.
His own body.
Okay. So all that makes sense.
Body biology, part of nature.
But then, take a look at
what he says a little bit.
All right.
Well let's, let's stay with our.
Is there anything else to add
here that we might want to say
about this philosophical
conception of nature?
Yeah.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Okay. So nature and
art.
Nature is essences
unchanged by man.
Art he says is a mixture of
his will, the same thing.
Now again, hovering
in the background,
the locking account of property.
Remember what I told you.
Where does property come?
It's because you're born with
property, it's called your body.
When you mix your body's ability
to labor, which is part of you,
with nature, you get,
not art, property.
More property.
So think about what is going
on in the translation of this
from nature and property
to nature and art.
Is it not unlike, we
might ask, life, liberty
and property from Locke?
Life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness from Jefferson.
Is it what?
Is it an idealization of this?
Is it covering up something that
would be, we'd rather not talk
about that's a little
inconvenient.
And one thing to bear in
mind, people would say,
I mean just take a look at this.
But is operations taken
together are so insignificant,
a little chipping, backing,
patching and washing,
that an impression so
grand is that of the world
on the human mind, they
do not vary in result.
People would point to that
and say, oh Emerson, gees.
19th Century thinker.
He had no idea.
This is all preindustrial.
He thinks the railroad
is a good thing.
If he could wake up today, and
look what we've done to nature,
he'd realize that he
was completely wrong.
Right. I mean we
can change nature.
We can destroy the world.
We are destroying the world.
I believe in global warming.
You know, personally, and
you know we've done that.
Right. Yeah.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Well I guess you know
he,
he would say well gees I
guess we made a lot of art.
[ Chuckles ]
[ Laughter ]
All right.
But having said that, anybody
ever go to planetarium shows
or look at pictures from
the Hubble telescope?
Or just think about all
the freaking nature that's
out there?
What have we done
to affect that?
Come on. We are insignificant
in a certain way.
So Emerson is interested.
So Emerson would say, you know,
he would probably say that's
probably exactly what he'd say.
He'd say look, we
have not affected.
And yet, that's not
where he wants to end up.
Where he wants to
end up is the fact
that we are not only
not significant,
we are absolutely significant
and that's because, again,
not of what we do to nature,
but of our connection to God.
Last thing I want you to see.
Philosophically, the not me,
expand on what you're saying
so we're absolutely clear on it.
The only thing that is you,
the only thing that is the me,
is my soul or my
consciousness I suppose.
But my soul.
Everything else is part of
the not me, even my body.
Now think about that.
When you look in the mirror,
what do you think
of as yourself?
Would you be the same person if
your, you know, I mean maybe,
maybe people, I don't know.
I've never actually bleached
my hair blonde or something.
But if you were to change
the way you look radically,
and have plastic surgery
you would say well it's just
my body.
It's not, maybe, maybe we're
more, you know, it's more, more,
we're more intoned
with that idea.
But what he wants to suggest is
that the body is
just a contingency.
It's not really you.
What you look like,
what your gender is,
you can extrapolate from this.
What your sexuality is.
What your race is.
All this kind of stuff.
The idea that but he's
pushing is that all
of these are contingent.
That is what you might say
puts him in a certain line
of American philosophy that
we would call individualistic.
And I would even call
ontologically individualistic.
Right. The society
exists only afterwards.
And all these things.
But not only society,
everything exists only after.
You are your soul first.
That's you.
And then a whole bunch of
stuff gets added on like a box
to contain your soul and it
has to go with, you know,
your beautiful blonde hair, or
your beautiful brunette hair,
or your beautiful blue eyes,
or your beautiful brown eyes,
or your beautiful mind.
All of that stuff is extra.
I just want you to
think about that,
because it's a really
strange way of thinking.
It's not a way that any of us
experience being in the world.
We are all born, as Emerson
would say, belatedly.
We're born into families.
We're born into communities.
We're born into a nation.
We're born into a world.
Really crappy things have
happened in the world before us
that we have had, you know,
nothing to do with, and yet have
to live with the
consequences of.
That question of belatedness
is a big one for Emerson.
And what Emerson does not want,
Emerson wants to find modes
of thinking that will keep us
from being hampered, harnessed,
constrained by that
idea of belatedness.
Okay. So one of the things
Emerson would say is that idea
of the me, we need
to hang on to.
The me is connected to
the reason, to the soul.
Later on in some of his essays
he goes on to develop and idea
that he calls the over soul.
It's kind of like the
sum total of all souls.
And it's the thing that,
in some sense, is a conduit
between human beings
and the divine.
So I want you to see
that Emerson is pushing these
individualistic ideas farther
than any puritan would.
But even further
than Franklin would.
He's giving them a
kind of inflection.
So you might say, this is
another solution to the problem
of religion and enlightenment.
Or spirituality and
enlightenment right.
Edwards has one solution,
Franklin has one solution,
Emerson had another solution.
All right.
I'm going to skip over
talking about Siedenburg
because I don't think
it's as important
as thinking about that image.
And then we'll end
there for today.
Anybody remember this?
This is one of the
famous moments in nature.
And as you can see,
it was quickly caricatured
in the popular press.
This is on page 1112.
Now again, think
about your Edwards
as a proto-romantic thinker.
Edwards Bell rises nature,
nature becomes an
example that he can use.
He gives his models
for enlightenment.
Edwards already is
veering away from Bradford.
Emerson's going to
push it even further.
Nature becomes the
grounds of revelation.
We study nature.
We study itself.
Nature becomes our
conduit to the self.
By studying the self
we study the divine.
Okay so nature is not to print.
We are not to print.
In fact nature becomes a form,
a place where revelation
can happen.
Emerson is a romantic thinker
insofar as he also agrees,
you might say, that, that
somehow adults have forgotten.
Right. The children are
closer to the God had.
There's that wonderful poem that
words with rise, intimations,
the ode intimations
of immortality.
Right. People have read that?
In [inaudible].
Intimations of immortality.
It's about how the
child comes down
and you know screaming all these
kind of God like qualities.
And then he gets kind
of really depressing,
because all of a sudden
as the child gets older,
gets more constrained.
And Emerson, and words
just kind of stop.
Couldn't figure out
where to go next.
It's like got himself into
a real deep writing funk
because he couldn't
figure out what to do.
He's painted a situation
in which you're only
getting further and further
from this God, from
God as you grow older.
And finally, there's a moment,
it's kind of breaking from him,
and then he says oh
but in those embers,
like the fire's going out.
No. But there's a little bit
of embers, we can rekindle it.
And that's, I guess,
what poetry does.
So Emerson is along
the same lines here.
To speak truly few adult
persons can see nature.
Most persons do not see the sun,
at least they have a
very superficial seeing.
The sun illuminates
only the eye of the man,
but shines into the high
and heart of the child.
The lover of nature
is he whose inward
and outward senses are still
truly adjusted to each other,
who has retained the
spirit of infancy,
even into the era of manhood.
All right.
Now skip a few sentences on.
Nature is a setting
that fits equally well,
a comic or a morning peace.
In good health the air is a
cordial of incredible virtue.
And he's going to explain that.
Crossing a bear common,
and people often think
of this transfer an eyeball
thing takes place in the woods.
Not necessarily.
It can happen in the common.
People think this
was Cambridge common.
It's kind of like
Washington Square Park.
Crossing a bear common in
snow puddles of twilight
under a clouded sky
without having an
in my thoughts any occurrence
of special good fortune.
And again, think of Edwards
with the sun, with the thunder.
Right. This is going to
be a moment of revelation.
I have enjoyed a
perfect exhilaration.
Almost I fear to think how
glad I am in the woods too.
So also happening in the city,
it can happen in the woods.
A man casts off his years
as the snake is slough
and at what period so ever
of life is always a child.
In the woods it's
perpetual youth.
Within these plantations of God,
a decorum and sanctity rain,
a perennial festival is dressed,
and the guest sees
not how we should tire
of them in a thousand years.
In the woods, we return
to reason and faith.
There I feel that nothing
can befall me in life.
No disgrace, no calamity,
leaving the eyes.
Right. So eyes is a
privilege sense for him.
We'll talk about that more.
Which nature cannot repair.
And then here's the moment.
Standing on the bear ground, my
head bathed by the blithe air,
uplifted into infinite space,
all mean egotism vanishes.
Note the words.
It's not all egotism
that vanishes.
It's all mean egotism
that vanishes.
We still keep some egotism.
I become a transparent eyeball.
I am nothing.
I see all.
Think back to your
Edward Taylor.
Isn't this kind of a
weird Taylor-like image?
And it's again that
contradiction.
I see nothing.
Right. I, excuse me.
I am nothing.
I see all.
The currents of the universal
being circulate through me.
Yet he is talking
about electricity.
It's Franklin in too.
I am part or partial of God.
The name of the nearest
friends sounds then foreign
and accidental.
To be brothers, to be
acquaintances, masters
or servants is then a
trivial and a disturbance.
Think of Hutchinson
or Sanctification.
All this stuff is extra.
I'm just having this moment.
To be brothers, to be
acquaintances, masters,
or servants is then a
trivial and a disturbance.
I am the lover of uncontained
and immortal beauty.
In the wilderness I
find something more dear
and [inaudible] than
in streets or villages.
Again it's society,
unnecessary evil.
In the tranquil landscape and
especially in the distant line
of the horizon man
beholds somewhat
as beautiful as his own nature.
His own nature.
Nature out there is a poor
copy of your own nature.
I want you to see this as a kind
of synthetic moment where a lot
of the building blocks hat
we've been investigating
up until this point
are re-synthesized
into something else.
Into an Emersonian
philosophy of self reliance.
All right.
We're going to leave it there.
Because we do not finish with
Emerson, no American scholar,
no experience on the midterm.
We will only, only nature and
self reliance are fair game.
And one of them will be
there in the passages.
So hope you've thought
about what I've been saying.
But not the other two.
Just those two.
All right.
Good luck with your preparation.
I'll see you here bright and
early before 2:00 on Wednesday.
