emerson history essay

emerson history essay

the Influence of Emerson’s Philosophy on American History

1. Introduction

The effect of Emerson’s philosophy on American history has been an interesting area of study for quite some time. People sense that since Americans are such a restless and curious folk, they must have needed a guide to lead them through the unstable periods of discovery and development. Emerson has been known to serve in that position. His work cannot merely be termed as pure enlightenment, but it is the transformation of practical ideas that he represents, reading others of their full potential; most importantly freeing his audience from the boundary of pure rationalism where the self is obscure, to a more influential school of thought. Thereby, raising the importance of the individual by ministering the confidence within. What Emerson wanted to be remembered for, before anything else, was the great ruler of the twentieth century: confidence. As a great believer in the potential for human development, or regeneration, he set a boundary of rationalism where the self is to higher institutions influencing the institution by means of his address and optimism. One reason was that his words were persuasive; a second reason was that his energy and influential source were felt to be completely out of universal strength.

Within any literary, political, or influential sphere, there is the philosopher that must motivate the movement with the original concept for progress. In the realm of American history and the study of literature, philosophers such as Samuel Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson, molded the life of the American people. Embedded with the foundation of Emerson’s philosophy, Americans believed in themselves more than ever and saw a new light for what the future of the nation could be. His influence on American thought and writing was so powerful that he was soon sought after and deemed the “American Philosopher.” A believer in transcendentalism, Emerson’s philosophy incorporated a myriad of self-affirming concepts.

2. Emerson’s Philosophy and Its Core Tenets

Emerson is the first American who was trusted with this device. By the very nature of his Genius, he is the Representative Man of a great Conviction, who offers this Sign on the Part of its adherents. With me not themselves, for I may be a Village as well as along the present Year. But, knows how to issue many a beloved taking concern such that I cannot justly be denied credit for fulfilling my debt to him but were I far better supplied with word, I am sure that I should find you attentive listening & interest ready interspersing. For the cause he waits to Earth represent, they are venturing through all and storm to give effect to the purpose of their habits. They are capable and observed, they are informed by expressives, they rise apart, they are the creators of wealth and peace; to a great extent, the content & Phillips Operated his brother with his observances; and to found for her creatures makes the Coast of character.

Emerson as a Representative Man. Special Omens of his Influence. The scope of his Influence. How his Philosophy was a System, and how it was defective in this Respect. His Position among Critics of Life and Speculative Writers. His Difference from Carlyle. His Relation to the Class of which Carlyle is a Member. Its bearing on his Style. Its Relation to his Morality. Its bearing on his Influence over young Men. His Receiving and Personal Influence. The Examination of what Emerson taught bearing on American History. The Nature of his Influence, for Good, for Evil. Illustration of it from the Influence of Coleridge’s Religious Opinions, and the Influence of Schiller’s Writings.

Synopsis of Emerson and of his Philosophy. Emerson and his Philosophy.

3. Emerson’s Impact on American Intellectual Thought

Clearly, Emerson was influential to thinkers of prestige during his lifetime. Moreover, again uniquely, it was Emerson who had the distinction of procuring a “bourgeois philosopher” status for himself, despite his contrary abhorrence of having his systems of philosophy and ethics given any such dignity. From this acclaim, one can hardly wonder that many college undergraduates eagerly absorbed his metaphysics, subjects who claimed their creative works were merely innovative elements readily understandable if their theories were internalized. All this by a man who was not able to set forth a complete philosophical system or to write books with the grace, logic, or sophistication of a professional philosopher!

Regardless of his impact on American letters, Emerson is of importance to the historian because his efforts were typical of those of other American thinkers in reflecting the spirit of American intellectual inquiry. Moreover, in his case, the development of a uniquely American philosophy seems almost a matter of prophecy. The origins of American philosophical inquiry trace themselves to Emerson and his contemporaries. Even after the German idealists and historians had their effect on the country, questions concerning Goethe’s theory of colors, or whether Hegel’s notion of the evolutionary concept of history should be incorporated in the College of Philosophy at Harvard, persisted. Emerson and his contemporaries started the tradition, supplying many American thinkers with motifs that repeat themselves almost automatically.

4. Emerson’s Influence on Social and Political Movements

Emerson disengaged himself from the land question and other specific political issues, deliberately heeding his intuition that “We cannot rival an American Congress in number or influence, but in a higher and truer sense I must consider that we represent the sentiment of this town, and whilst these despicable conservatism of Oxford and Bundee, must have its weight, we in the present are not without a counterpoise.” This propensity to deal with problems more on the philosophical level than by political action made him patient with the South and its peculiar institution of slavery long after many Britishers and Americans of both the British and the American body considered patience unwarranted. To this patience must be added a genuine regard for the landed gentry of the South. This does not preclude his recognition of an innate justice to the black man and the necessity and eventual probability of his eventual progress but it did preclude the necessity or the moral conviction of the employment of force to prevent O’Sullivan’s “manifest destiny of slavery”.

How did Emerson view various social and political issues, and to what extent were his ideas ahead of his time? While he was neither a radical nor a reformer in the active sense of the word, his very detachment from specific projects and his articulation of general principles provided coherence and support to many of the causes and movements of his own and subsequent eras. Civil Disobedience, while deeply grounded in Thoreau’s direct experience, came historically after and was highly influenced by Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”. On the other hand, the Society of Friends, Confucius, the laws of God and other external influences were involved in its development and the concept of subversive civil disobedience is still subject to misunderstanding, for when Henry Thoreau wrote on the subject he was not speaking only of the disobedience of the individual to unjust laws but also of his failure to pay his share of taxes to support the Mexican War, based upon a “Non-Resistant’s” conviction that there should be no such wars or other instruments of coercion.

5. Conclusion and Reflections

These experiences have led me to consider elements of antebellum society on which my short paper had only touched. Certainly, the claims that Rothman makes about transcendentalism’s social utility belong to the type of moderate expression against which Lenters rails.

Rothman spells out quite clearly, and I by no means want to blur his points. But his claims for excess, his claim that a great many antebellum ideas contradicted their utility as consolers of the white lower middle class, remain costly, as Lenters has pointed out. Nonetheless, while Rothman’s thesis has been proven neither fully nor universally, he has gone a long way toward establishing his cause; certainly the root cultural facts that texture American life qualify the notions which stem from the garden of practical reason.

Emerson was a warm and devoted individual, possessed by an unusually beautiful dream. Among his countrymen, he took a fraction of that dream in order to protect a man or to inflame his contemporaries with enthusiasm for freedom of spirit. The spiritual dignity Emerson gave his countrymen through his aspirations lay in their promotion of a heaven-transcending, always forward-looking, and potentially liberating movement.

In conclusion, I would like to summarize my essay. Through my study, I often had the feeling that Emerson’s greatness as a philosopher was often skipped over. Historians and critics like to label him as a transcendentalist and leave it at that, as if they have saved the world from any further explanation on Emerson’s appeal. But there was much more to Emerson’s philosophy than its initial reception, more than history or the national ideal, more than just reconciliation of mankind with the unfathomable.