Ralph Waldo Emerson asserts that history is but a biography of life of the subjective and in the history of philosophical thought this is quite a pervasive concept. In Plato’s Republic the concept of justice is explored. The question is consistently asked throughout the text of what exactly justice is. Emerson, coming into his own, attempts to answer these questions not just philosophically but poetically as well. Many writers and thinkers during Emerson’s time were magnetized to him. From Melville to Thoreau to Whitman and Hawthorne and even Dickinson, Emerson managed to capture many writers in his web of self-reliance and virtue. Even if said writers did not exactly agree with Emerson, nonetheless his ideas persisted and influenced their writings deeply. These writers uphold the spirit of American exceptionalism influencing generations to come within the American philosophical and political sphere on both sides of the spectrum.
Emerson’s influences on individualism have had lasting impact on the American adoption of such an ideology. For many American’s, individualism is a core tenet to many of their beliefs that extends outside political expression, philosophic, poetic and even religious ideas stem from Emerson’s words and his writings on Justice are wholly American.
Emerson, Power, Truth, and Justice
Not only did Emerson manage to capture the intellectual core of America in his time, but he also captured the hearts of many Americans, reflecting not only a rich pragmatic philosophical history but also messages that resonated with Americans. The goal of this essay is to link Ralph Waldo Emerson and other American writers such as Emily Dickinson to extrapolate justice as a political, philosophical, and economic concept. Emerson has inspired Americans beyond his timeframe. In the modern age many Americans feel as if Emerson’s words still breath life into the American experience and the American sense of justice is just as alive as it were 140 years ago.
If history to Emerson is nothing more than a biography for the subjective experiences of individuals then logically, life must follow a similar pattern and all facets of life stem from this biography. Emily Dickinson would know these ideas all too well, her poems were written to emote subjective responses from her readers, to get them to know their own biography but to express hers.
In the beginning of History by Emerson he states that there is a mind that is common to all individual men. The common mind, as described by Emerson is something every man has access to, every man to Emerson is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. Whilst everyman may have access to this common mind it is not a place in which man can walk in and out of freely so to say. The individual is admitted to the common mind through virtue and through understanding the role in which nature plays on the individual. Individual experience to Emerson is but a reflection of the universal nature of man. The universal nature of man is the key to understanding Emerson’s thoughts and his goals. As a transcendentalist he seeks to link the connections between humanity and nature. Emerson does not seek to place the ubiquitous qualities of mankind against an outline of what some might call human nature. Emerson seeks to place the individual at whole with one another.
Dickinson’s poems echo Emerson’s sentiments when you begin to unravel the lines. Dickinson’s poems begin with listing off ways in which an individual learns their relationship to the rest of the world. For Dickinson individuals are seemingly connected to the world by paradox. The few lines of the poem, Dickinson says “To learn the transport through pain as the blind men learn the sun”. What Dickinson is saying here is that we can only know the world through its opposite or its paradox. Knowing the sun, for Dickinson requires at the very least for the observer to be in the dark. Dickinson uses various examples to convey her point, light, pleasure (transport), and the homeland are facts which can only be truly appreciated when one is enveloped in their opposite. This is what Dickinson will call the sovereign anguish a state in which paradoxes exist in their most organic state. The sovereign anguish is a form of pain it of itself. Wherein the observer is made aware of the full breadth of the good and the full breadth of the bad.
The Sovereign Anguish allows the observer to access a higher understanding of the universe as dictated by the line “These are the patient laurettes” those that receive this crown of awareness are the masters of the anguish and of the paradox of life. Dickinson was heavily influenced by the works of Emerson and his ideas stuck to her through her writing. Dickinson’s poem here is mainly advancing the idea of the universal nature of mankind. It works in tandem with the common mind’s grasp on those who are self-aware enough to embrace paradox as a fact of life. Emerson was not a stranger to paradox in fact Emerson wholly accepted the paradoxical life as a fact of nature.
Emerson’s reasons for accepting paradox are bound up with his feelings towards the human condition. Whereas many philosophers and writers before Emerson wrote about humanities nature and their immediate disposition to the world Emerson seeks to do the opposite. Inasmuch that Emerson would argue that man has no nature and that all facets of nature are bound to the soul. The universal nature of humanity exists as a framework for our connection to the world. In History Emerson says that a man is a whole encyclopedia of facts and by this he means that humanity has a reciprocal relationship with nature. Nature casts its light on mankind and through this event it reveals something to mankind it had not known before. Thus, nature exists in the same kind of realm in which Dickinson creates for her reader. One where through opposite knowledge is gained.
Man’s opposite in Emerson’s case is the paradox of the soul and of the material or in simpler terms of the body and experience. The body is man’s motor function his ability to exert physical power onto his surroundings. While experience is the common life of perspective on our actions but also the experience of our soul with the natural world. The body, to Emerson is concerned with the material world and of objects. The body to Emerson can misrepresent itself it is concerned with material objects or of societal customs and norms. Yet experience, or what Emerson constantly calls, the soul is concerned with perspective and insight to the greater world around us. This is paradoxical because humanity is often too caught up in their body and the material world which creates a confusing situation where we cannot extract the benefits of experience.
Emerson does not want to put the body and the soul at odds with each other, he seeks harmony between the two facets of our being. However, the limits to experience namely the friction between long-term and short-term thinking leave us less appreciative of life and its phenomena. For Emerson, we fail to unlock our full potential by the distractions of everyday life, nature is a divine creation it requires an embrace of life as is, an embrace of paradoxical moments such as the paradox between soul and body. Emerson takes great inspiration from Plato in his writings. As he says in Experience:
“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.’ (Experience 296)
Emerson wants us to think critically about our actions because to Emerson, nothing is permanent. As he will say directly after this line that we animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Emerson’s metaphysical assertion of moods is inherently platonic and exactly why he chooses to leave the idea of human nature behind. Emerson’s relationship of Plato is one of admiration, he recognized that Plato’s teachings can tell us a lot about human thinking and why we act the way we do. Plato saw the emotions that are experienced within the human body are split up into three central parts. Appetitive (epithumetikon), spirited (thumoedies), and reason (logistikon). For Plato three parts of the soul or tripartite existed for a specific reason and in Republic Plato would go on to explain as to how these parts interact with each other, his conclusion being that logistikon or reason should be the master or controller of the other parts of the soul. As Plato Writes in Republic:
“Then isn’t it appropriate for the rationally calculating element to rule since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul; and for the spirited kind to obey it and be its ally?” (Republic IV 441e).
Aristotle would later extrapolate upon Plato’s theory of the soul by developing different aspects of our emotions. The most important one being the dynamic element to emotional behavior, the dynamic element is our behavioral impulse towards action which typically accompanies emotional evaluation (Knuuttila 2014). Aristotle would say in his Nicomachean Ethics that virtue is a state of character concerned with choice lying the mean. The mean for Aristotle is relative to us this thing being determined by rational principles. Whilst Emerson does take a great deal from Plato’s work it would not be unwise to argue that Emerson’s philosophy takes a great deal from Aristotle as well. As said before, Emerson believes life is constantly colored by moods to the point where they dictate our thinking and our experience which in turn has claim over our perspective.
This is an epistemological framework in which Emerson constantly refers to in his works. The moods are dynamic, they are always changing in different scenarios and because of this the mortal body can never truly see an object straight, only from different angles or perspectives. Going back to the paradox of the body and experience, the body to Emerson is what the appetitive part of the soul is to Plato. It is the largest part, the one in which is wholly within the objects it orbits around. The body will only be in the position to accept the events of nature but through nature itself and experience will we get different hues and aspects of the events and objects. Again, the body and the soul are not at direct odds but the body, like Plato’s. epithumetikon or appetitive, something must reign in the material aspects of the body to create unity between parts.
The material aspects of the body are any object at a glance it is the first impressions of any natural occurrence. Since we can only view these occurrences under the flair of specific dynamic moods Emerson will say that any first impression of nature is too close to an absolute or objective narrative around the object. As Emerson will say in Nature that nature and all her facilities is the circumstances which dwarfs every other circumstance. Through Nature, like Dickinson’s sovereign anguish will we truly know what our actions mean and what our thoughts mean. This is precisely why Emerson can simply not accept a view of human nature, it is too absolutist and too objective of a standpoint. Nature is not a static occurrence it is a dynamic and unrelenting force. Emerson, again in Experience will say that nature hates calculation or calculators, those who try to pick and piece nature together to try and assert one meaning over its existence. Nature to Emerson is impulsive and dynamic just as man is dynamic and saltatory, moving from mood to mood:
“Man lives by pulses; our organic movements are such” (Experience 309).
Nature and man share similarities in that regard we both have impulsive dynamic behaviors which drive us to different actions. Man on the other hand has the ability to use natures impulses to his behavior, to unify with natures aspects melding them with his perspective and his soul to create a synthesis of dynamism. Emerson would go onto say in Nature that our salvation lies within the very system we emerge from that being nature itself. Plato in the Republic would argue with Thrasymachus that something just is in fact something advantageous. While Thrasymachus will say it is advantageous for the strong Plato would end up arguing that what is just is something advantageous for reason and truth. Emerson will argue that what is just is advantageous for the perspectivist through process and through the soul.
Emerson will say that nature in essence is the areas unchanged by man, space, the air, the river, the leaf. It is a mystical existence in which man can learn many perspectives and gain an original relation to universe. This is the universal nature of man it is not a human nature but a universal relation to nature. A paradox of perspective, man to Emerson will see nature and take all he can from its light and objects and so actions enact a type of cause and effect. We will create heroes, preserve history, and as we shall see later create governments that reflect our relation to nature. Further, within those categorizations of our mind what Emerson will call sepulchers or tombs of the fathers, of the mind we will extract new perspectives.
These are processes which occur at once and over time and Emerson will once again show that our metaphysical relation to nature through process will end up affecting social beliefs and institutions. Just as Emerson values nature and self-reliance he also valued a world of process. Process, to Emerson was the basis for that train of moods that Emerson spoke of. Life is a flux of moods and the logic behind this flux is process. Nothing to Emerson is permanent not even our Being in this world and as he will describe again in Experience that it is not a wall but a “interminable ocean”. This vast ocean is at the very core of our Being as Emerson alludes to that the only thing that is relatively constant in the minds of men. That is the First Cause, the initial thoughts that are sprung from our dealings with nature and thus flood society and bounce back into the human mind. To Emerson, our lives are constantly crashing with other minds or what commandments we blindly obey. However, process can take us away from the distractions of society, from the human instinct to follow someone else’s lead. It is through our perspective in which we can cultivate a new process one which detaches us from complacency and tradition.
Emerson will say in Circles that permanence is but a word of degrees simply because our lives are always following what we think is the truth. He cleverly opens the essay by saying the eye is the first circle and through the eye we create the second in which through nature the creation of “circles” persists indefinitely. Emerson will say that our apprenticeship to truth allows us to draw circles around the circles we make. The circle that Emerson is persistently getting at is perspective, truth can only be revealed to us by staying close to it like a huddling up next to a fire. Through this relationship with truth, we can draw new perspectives from the old ones we encountered. But Emerson knows his assertions in Circles and Experience are not as pragmatic as one would initially think. Emerson will go on to argue that there is a constant push to discredit the new and stick with the old and the tradition. While our relationship with nature can reveal to us a sense of meaning, our relationship with society at whole can be taxing and even block us off from this connection.
Emerson will say that our greatness lies in direction, not so much in action while this might seem mystical, this is a rather pragmatic stance by Emerson as it shows how far man is willing to go for self-expression because that is at the core of what Emerson seeks to put into our minds. That self-expression is they key to unlocking our purpose in life. Self-expression will later be taken advantage of by writers such as Nietzsche, using it as a basis for his theory around the will to power. Nietzsche was an Emersonian at heart because Emerson viewed self-expression and personal freedom above all else. This is because Emerson viewed the world into two separate categories one being power and the other being form. Power is something Emerson is constantly thinking about whether it be metaphysically or socially. Emerson’s views on power and form are again taken from Plato and Aristotle. Emerson’s categorizations of human direction could be seen as his own addendums to tripartite soul theory.
Power is a transitionary state in which something new is always occurring, Emerson will go onto say that this power is not always controllable. This may be because like new perspectives and the truth, power only pops up when the opportunity arises, and it takes a strong person to use that power. Emerson wants to recognize his ability to draw on power to create harmony and unity within ourselves. As Emerson puts it in Self-Reliance:
“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 in the darting to an aim the one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes.” (Self-Reliance 50).
As Harold Bloom will put it Emerson’s views on power are distinctly American his appreciation of what he will call a “dialectic of power” one where power is always at the crossing (Bloom 192). Emerson’s view of power is more akin to artistic and analytical rather than traditional political use of the word. Emerson wants us to become the best possible version of ourselves, to him, this is only achievable through harmony and acceptance of truth and of virtue. As Bloom will put it, to make us cosmos rather than chaos (Bloom 193). This idea is congruent with Emerson’s ideas of unity and harmony that we can better ourselves through the transitory stages of power. Power lying in the transition and in the crossing of nature is cyclical for humanity. For example, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Washington crossing the Delaware, or Napoleon crossing back into France after exile could all be seen as this transitionary stage between power and direction. In Power Emerson will go onto say that power is like truth or virtue is intrinsic to the natural world:
“All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will be in the current of events, and strong with their strength.” (Power 3).
In Self-Reliance Emerson asserted that power is not always controllable however it takes a certain person, one who ultimately relies in himself and trusts himself to form new perspectives. The self-reliant actor will see that their power lies in the transition between states. New perspectives are cultivated but only by the individual who aligns with the true nature of the world. Power may be ephemeral to others but to the self-reliant actor it is a walking companion to his actions and directions. The nature of the world is dynamic, a constantly changing world of facts and perspectives, however, to Emerson the strong and powerful will always be at unity with the laws of nature.
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events. Great men have always done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age.” (Self-Relance 33).
The laws of nature are compensating because to Emerson the laws of nature are divine enough to lift man into a higher place. However, man’s duty is to himself is to accept his circumstances wherever he is found but to work with your circumstances is not only a sign of working with the laws of nature but also of self-reliance and self-trust. To Emerson the greatest of men are able to accept their situation but also overcome it with childlike confidence but with the wisdom of age and experience. Emerson constantly wants us thinking about what we can learn from nature thus his belief that aligning oneself with the laws of nature will make one strong.
Another important aspect in Emerson’s push for us to observe nature in a way that can make us whole is the idea of compensation. Compensation for Emerson is wholly within the divine realm, it is a karmic sense of compensation:
“Every act rewards itself, or in other words integrates itself in a twofold manner: First in the thing or in real nature; and secondly in the circumstance or in apparent nature.” (Compensation 74)
The karmic nature of compensation means that an individual will essentially get back what they put in with life. The actual occurrence of compensation manifests itself in two ways for the individual. First the action which the individual solidifies itself into nature, meaning, if an individual does a violent act or a benevolent act then those deeds are supplanted into the world. Good or bad actions are crystalized, and the second manner in which action is integrated is the circumstance. The apparent nature which Emerson is talking about is the perspective of the individual committing the action. Compensation and action then go off in two separate directions but ultimately arriving at different end points. The cause and effect of an action cannot be severed and thus the stem or the root cause is bound to Emerson’s laws of compensation.
In this sense if an individual starts committing bad actions the “reward” so to speak is immediate, the action has set off in motion methods of integration. The two points of integration are true nature and apparent nature. These two points of reality could indicate that Emerson is asserting some sort of perpendicular relationship with nature. What Emerson is indicating is that the truth and the perspective are not wholly related. For Emerson, the truth lies in nature and nature is divine. The human perspective is subject distractions within in his perspective and must align with the laws of nature to learn truth and virtue.
This is a fairly extreme position found in Emerson’s writing but considering his love for Plato this could just be, for Emerson, taking Plato’s conclusions at the end of Republic to their extremes. Emerson believes in a dualistic framework in the world that every object must have its opposite. Recalling Dickinson once again when she says that we must learn about the sun through the darkness by being blind from time to time. This is similar for Emerson we must know our opposites and embrace them for only embracing one or the other is impossible:
“Cause and effect, means and ends, seeds and fruit, cannot be severed for the effect already blooms in the cause the end preexists in the means the fruit in the seed.” (Compensation 74).
What this means for power in Emerson’s writings is substantial when we consider the dialectical and dualistic essence of the laws of nature. Going by the logic that has been explained thus far, to understand power we must first understand weakness. Considering the Emerson has been preaching embracing moderation, reconciling the dualisms of the world. It could then be argued then that Emerson’s belief that merging power and weakness together through a sense of self-trust and knowing one’s limits is a sort of power in its own right.
Emerson will extrapolate upon this idea once again in Compensation as he states poetically:
“The law of nature is, Do the thing and you shall have the power but they who do not thing have not the power.” (Compensation 83)
Spoken poetically almost as if it was written like a proverb Emerson is stating that not expressing yourself in a manner that is fit for you will not make you powerful. Consistently, throughout Emerson’s writings he has lambasted such vices as complacency, obedience, and conformity. For Emerson, the strong and powerful individual embraces his weaknesses and his limits. While the weak and meager individual is complacent in them or is told what his weakness is by other people or society at large. Emerson will say himself in Compensation again that the good are befriended even by weakness and defect.
As stated, before Emerson is asserting some perpendicular essence that humans have with nature and it is up to them to get parallel. Emerson’s beliefs are in a way pragmatic and divine in the sense of his adoption of mathematical principles to explain his methods. Emerson will use specific words to create depth in his argumentation. Parallel, integration, perpendicular are all words that Emerson is accustomed to in his writings, especially in Compensation. Consider, for the moment parallel, perpendicular, and intersecting lines. These lines all take on different properties ultimately, but they are exactly different functions for two lines exactly. This has a lot of meaning for Emerson when we consider Emerson’s dualistic approach to nature. With the two lines and their different forms it seems that these lines could represent Emerson’s dualism. At different stages, the individual is in different stages with his relationship with nature.
Initially the individual is placed perpendicular with nature, the distractions of the world as well as man being exposed to the ills of conformity and obedience make him outside the light of nature. Emerson wants to get us to a stage where we are parallel with the laws of nature to gain all of its benefits. To do this we must be at a sort of intersecting stage with nature and to do this Emerson will introduce one requirement. Revelation is an idea that goes unnoticed within Emerson’s writings particularly because it is not often written about or it is mentioned only briefly but this idea of revelation is the key to understand Emerson’s dualism and furthermore his entire philosophy.
Emerson himself defines revelation as the disclosure of the soul this resides in the soul wherein the soul as Emerson will say, mingles with the universal soul, the divine. Society by Emerson’s prescription is always telling us how we should act and how we should feel, this is the perpendicular arrangement of man’s state. It is only through revelation that man can realize how to come into his own. The use of revelation in The Over-Soul was to emphasize that God is with us, he is the divine maker, and he is the over-soul, and he is nature. However, this can be extended to the rest of Emerson’s philosophy as well.
To get to the intersecting stage we need the revelation that the divine is within each and every one of us we share a piece of the divine a piece of nature. Realizing this we must take action to lead us to a direction where a transition occurs, where the crossing happens. That is power for Emerson the ability to come into your own and take the actions need to rely on yourself. He will explore this even further in The Over Soul by saying:
“We must distinguish the announcements of the soul, in manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is in an influx of the divine mind into our mind.” (The Over-Soul 199)
Emerson is writes poetically in all of his essays, they overlap in themes and messages because he constantly wants us to start thinking about these ideas. Harold Bloom would go on to argue that Emerson is not an idealist or transcendentalist philosopher but an “experimental essayist like Montaigne and so more a dramatist of the self than a mystic” (Bloom 193). He will say that Emerson’s words were as authentic as an American poet could have been (Bloom 192). This is important to understand Emerson because when we consider his writing style, dramatic, and poetic it creates volume to his work. As was said before major themes and ideas are coming back up in Emerson’s work and this is done purposefully. As Emerson will say in The Poet:
“For it is not meters but a meter-making argument that makes a poem” (The Poet 266).
This quote at a glance may seem like a proverbial take on how poetry should function, however, this is Emerson describing his own works to his readers speaking clearly and honestly with them. The “meter-making argument” is one that is living just as us humans live. Emerson is calling for poetry to be organic in nature not just concerned with rhythm and pattern. Emerson would consider this kind of poetry complacent and conforming to a rigid system of how poetry should work. Poetry should function as a philosophical assertion for the poet an instrument in where man can come into his own. He says that the poetry should be so passionate and alive that its spirit has its own architecture and adorns nature with new things (Emerson 266). This alludes back to what Emerson is arguing in Compensation that the cause and effect of a thing or in simpler terms, its opposite in inseparable from the thing. In the way the fruit cannot be separated from the seed. The poet and the poetry cannot be separated the verse of poetry is merely an extension of the life of the poet and thus nature.
Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By — Paradox — the Mind itself —
Presuming it to lead
Quite Opposite — How Complicate
The Discipline of Man —
Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain —
(Dickinson 910)
Dickinson’s poem is a great example of what Emerson means by meter-making argument in a poem. The first stanza indicates that experience takes the mind to many places the angled road indicating the multitude of events that transpire in life, angled, elevated, deviating pathways. Experience is another sort of paradox for Dickinson as the mind is lead along by experience, letting it take the lead in the problems and circumstances it places itself in. The next stanza indicates that this paradox is complicated. “Quite Opposite / How Complicate/ The Discipline of Man” what Dickinson means is that the mind is preferring experience over truth, which is striking, very similar to Emerson’s perpendicular arguments of Compensation.
Where Dickinson separates from Emerson is that man is choosing to put himself in this manner. Whereas Emerson believed that men should seek to place themselves parallel to the laws of nature after being led astray with the distractions of society. Dickinson says that man chose to be in this distraction because experience to her brings comfort in the fact experiences can be relatively similar. For example, experience with romantic partners could make one feel more comfortable with falling in love. Experience is leading away in the angled roads of life and so the mind lets it led along these paths. That is why Dickinson closes the stanza with “Compelling Him to Choose Himself/ His Preappointed Pain” to indicate that man does choose his path in life and finds comfort in the little experiences.
This is a meter making argument, especially coming from Dickinson whose arguments are philosophical and pragmatic but also deeply personal. Dickinson was very complacent in her life; she forwent traditional social standings that were expected of females of the time. She decided to stay in her home in Amherst limiting the visits to only certain people within her extended family. Not to mention Dickinson’s relationship and feelings for Susan Gilbert further supports her choice to let experience guide her mind especially in regard to love and romance.
Dickinson’s words are what Emerson describes in The Poet as what a poet ought to do when writing. He says that the poet has a new thought and new experiences to unfold to her readers and will tell them how life is for them and because of this humanity will be richer in their appreciation for the poets passionate and invigorating arguments. Dickinson in any of her poems is doing exactly that, she is unfolding her own experiences so that readers can understand her coming into her own philosophically but also to draw depth from their own experiences. Poetically, Emerson’s highlight of how action rewards itself by integration is what happens when reading Dickinson’s poetry, we are integrated into her experience like the angled road learning more about her and ourselves along the way.
Ultimately Emerson said that “Life itself is a mixture of power and form and will not bear the least excess of either (Emerson 303).” We have talked in depth about Emerson’s views on power in nature and its effects on the human condition. Form, for Emerson is very simple for him it is a technique that man is to improve upon if he is to find revelation choosing the divine over-soul and uniting with nature. Form is a kind of technique an individual can constantly improve upon unlike power where power is something one either has or does not. As Emerson said himself “power but they who do not thing have not the power.” But what can be controlled is the ability to rely on yourself and trust yourself. Emerson by framing form in this manner recalls Plato and Greek maxim of gnÅthi seauton.
The Delphic maxim was like a motto for many Greek philosophers and the word essentially meant to know one’s limits to know limited humans really are in some capacity. In knowledge, in power, even in mortality. Knowing yourself was the first step in a long line of steps to metaphorically get out of the cave. Emerson would have to agree, I think what he wants us to realize is that perfecting the technique of self-reliance and self-trust will ultimately position use closer to nature and to the divine. Emerson may never have said anything about the idea tekhne tou biou in his essays he would been undoubtedly influenced by its meaning. It translates to the art of living and is mainly discussed in Michel Foucault’s dialogue Hermeneutics of The Subject. Foucault will end up saying that technique of life falls into a framework of caring for one’s life. Through this one uses the techniques he learns from caring for oneself to essentially create and inseparable bond between the art of living and existence. Through the technique of living, we can learn about ourselves and find and command all kinds of aspects of our existence.
“What one finds, what anyway must be obtained through the tekhne one installs in one’s life, is precisely a certain relationship of self to self which is the crown, realization, and reward of a life lived as a test One lives with the relationship to oneself as the fundamental project of existence, the ontological support which must justify, found, and command all the techniques of existence.” (Foucault 448)
If Emerson were alive to hear these words and talk to Foucault, I think they would have a lot to talk about. The late Hellenistic period and into the Roman Empire’s tekhne tou biou is Emerson’s form, the structure in which one must deal with all events of life to cultivate oneself and for Emerson that’s self-reliance, trust, and discipline.
“Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming.” (Nature, Discipline, 23)
Just as tekhne is bound up in the nature of self-care, form is bound up in the autonomous framework of self-reliance. There is an interesting and perhaps deeper connection between the rise of western subjectivity and their influences on Emerson. Tekhne was started out as the mystery to which the project of self-care attempted to answer however it was integrated into self-care making it absolute and firm in its application. Emerson has a special relationship with integration as we learned before. The integration in Emerson’s writing is how individuals can integrate form into self-reliance. By this it means how can man implement himself into nature and impose his will and exercise his reason. Writing again in Discipline Emerson will say:
“Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Savior rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the material which he may mold into what is useful.” (Nature, Discipline 24)
In this way Emerson is trying to get at individuals exercising their reason upon nature getting the privilege of greater knowledge as well as a deeper relation with nature because of it:
“The beauty of nature shines in his own breast. Man is greater that he can see this, and the universe less, because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are known” (Nature, Discipline 24).
Gaining this kind of knowledge is vital for Emerson, it separates the individual from the crowd and the wise man from the foolish man. The wise man as Emerson will say later on in Discipline that the wise man in the accomplishment of right actions, sees all which is done right. Wisdom is a way for man to unlock his greatest potential realizing how connected we can be to nature. It is a divine relation to nature in which man can express himself in an infinite number of ways. Because nature is fluid it can be a revolving door of expression of how a man can interpret and understand nature.
This kind of form which Emerson talks of is different from the development of subject that Foucault talks about in that for Foucault care of the self was just a means to explain life as a test or an exercise. For Emerson, the development of the individual is his understanding of his universal significance to nature. That understanding is built on trust and can only be crafted through form through exercising reason. For Emerson, Reason is the test instead of life being the test. Life for Emerson is the base description of man’s starting point in nature, but it takes reason and trust of the self to command all other aspects of his being. This separates Emerson’s individualism from any other. A pragmatic individualist will say that individuality is what separates man from man their actions and thoughts and feelings make them an individual or in other words, our preferences. Emerson’s individualism comes from universality and as Bugbee will put it The Inward Morning:
“Perhaps we are only truly individual in so far as we can acknowledge and act upon a universal significance in our lives which is the very opposite of divisive in its import for our relations with other persons. It seems necessary that such significance dawn upon each of us out of a life that is his alone and to act consonantly with it is also for each one of us to find a way that is his alone” (Bugbee 62)
To live consonantly with the acknowledgment of our universal significance is what Emerson will say towards the end of Discipline that every universal truth which we express in words implies or supposes every other truth (Emerson 26). He rounds out the essay by saying “Omne verum vero consonant” which translates from Latin meaning “Every truth agrees with every other truth”. So, for Emerson trust, ourselves is realizing that this life is ours alone and we must find our way alone. This is the test of reason, to find our path and to live in harmony with nature we must rely on ourselves.
That is Emerson’s form and power and how they both relate to nature and how their relationship can be used by man. So far power, truth, and self-reliance have been spoken upon and shown how interconnected they are. Justice, for Emerson, is the same, and thus far from what we have learned Emerson views Justice in the same way he views power and truth. It is a compensating arrangement. For Emerson, truth, power, and justice do not come from other people or society, or even a government. These ideas come from nature and it is up to man to take the steps needed to be compensated justly for his actions.
“Thus, in the soul of man, there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire.” (Divinity School Address).
Thus, all good and just things for Emerson exist within us but is our path alone to realize this and use this knowledge to better ourselves and to be parallel with the laws of nature. What Emerson wants us to be introspective. Emerson is again taking from Plato when he describes how we must live our lives. For Plato, we must recollect on the knowledge that originated within us before birth and use the knowledge we attain and reminisce on to know the true forms of the world. Emerson will say something similar that we must use the knowledge, power, form, and justice within us to become the truest version of ourselves.
“For all things proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. All things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it.” (Divinity School Address)
As Emerson will say in the same speech that by doing good acts and good deeds we are “instantly ennobled”. This relates to Emerson’s law of compensation in that if we do good things then the universe will reward us instantly and justly. This is in contrast to a Christian perception of goodness and compensation that was most prominent around Emerson’s time. Predominant Christian beliefs believe that good deeds will be rewarded in the end and the principle of last judgment will prevail. Emerson himself rejects this view of compensation as he writes at the beginning of Compensation:
“The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy unfolded ordinarily the doctrine of Last Judgement. He assumed that judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life.”
Emerson’s goal throughout the essay of Compensation is to rebuke this stance because he believes that good should not have to be miserable. He believes in the fact that the good by instantly being rewarded by their acts are made better off than the bad people of the world. The concept of evil to Emerson was described as “merely privative” a non-absolute figure that deprives objects. Idealistically, Emerson will say that good and benevolence are absolute and real in contrast to evil. Whilst evil will always subtract from life’s best qualities, namely self-reliance and the divine being of nature. Goodness, for Emerson will add to the best aspects multiplying them for everyone to potentially benefit from.
What Emerson means by this is that the world will essentially balance itself out in the end, no matter how much evil will come into this world there will always be good to replace it.
“The dice of God are always loaded the world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which turns it how will, balances itself” (Compensation 74)
Good and evil will therefore always be in a balancing act but for Emerson goodness is better to pursue because of the joy and happiness it brings men. This is partly due to the instant gratification for doing good deeds. Shortly after exclaiming that goodness is absolute and real, in the divinity school address, Emerson goes onto say that man has so much potential to be good and so much life is in him to experience and facilitate that goodness. He will say that “Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature”. Emerson thinks that compensation is not rewarded by material gain here on earth but by instant gratification from the divine through nature. Speaking the truth is a good deed for man to do and thus in Emerson’s own words speaking the truth means “All things alive or brute are vouchers and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness (Divinity School Address).
The whole of nature will pay attention to the goodness of an action by an individual and therefore rewards him spiritually. For nature recognizes goodness and virtue because it is both of these things by virtue of the divine. Emerson will say that nature rewards good people by helping with unexpected furtherance. This means that to speak truth nature will reward man with truth and insight into his very being, which will allow him to be in harmony with the divine. Thus, to be just and to do just things has the same effect under the law of compensation it is instant in its retribution and nature positively reinforces this behavior by way of insight and understanding.
“Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire.” (Divinity School Address).
It is in the same breath that Emerson preaches justice that he will tell the seniors of the Harvard Divinity School that man’s benevolence and his justice come from himself to further themselves and to be closer to God and the divine. This detracts from them major Unitarian thought of the time as Emerson discounted reliance on traditional religious doctrines in favor of individual moral sentiment. Emerson, echoing his philosophy but also in the canon of western subjectivity will say that to get the most out of our lives we must trust ourselves and ourselves alone.
“That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, obey thyself. That which shows God out of me makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being.” (Divinity School Address)
Emerson’s attraction to the stoic view of obeying thyself mirrors the hermeneutic structure of care of the self that Foucault explores. Emerson wants us to be hermeneutic with ourselves and our Being through this we can truly attain enlightenment even if this means abandoning relics of the past or popular or traditional moral sentiment.
” Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil” (Divinity School Address)
It is quite ironic enough that Emerson gave this speech to Harvard seniors as this very speech is Emerson solidifying his place in the American tradition of the individual. Thus, inspiring those attending the graduation but also a burgeoning intellectual class in America. Not only this Emerson capture the hearts of millions of Americans creating a deep-seated bond between his thought and American individualism. Following the speech at Cambridge, Emerson faced immediate negative feedback for his words. Emerson would indirectly touch on this event later on in Self-Reliance by saying:
“Your goodness must have some edge to it-else it is none” (Self-Reliance 36)
Emerson does not want us to abandon goodness he wants us to embrace what can make mankind so good. Emerson’s words are almost Kantian in their structure, Emerson recognizes man’s innate goodness but instead of pursuing that goodness to attain Kant’s categorical imperative instead Emerson wants the golden rule to apply to nature as that is man’s primary input to accessing higher planes of insight and introspection. Emerson, as he will say in Self-Reliance almost famously:
“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 amid the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” (Self-Reliance 38)
Emerson does not want us to alienate ourselves from society, society is important for an individual’s upbringing for him but if our goodness is to have some edge to it and to be truly just, we must go alone in our quest for knowledge and introspection. These ideas resonate so readily in the minds of the American people. Our history started on the principles of going alone, in search of our sort of justice. An American sense of justice is a justice that comes from ourselves, although Emerson’s ideas were spiritual ours, I would argue are more pragmatic and secular. That, however, does not exclude Emerson’s entire philosophy from the American experience.
Written in our Deceleration of Independence, a document written to declare that we are going alone on our angled path, from the traditional complacency of British colonialism. It is written that each person is entitled to Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness. Although Emerson was not born in 1776 this American ethic is at the core of his very beliefs. To Emerson the pursuit of happiness is pursuing goodness, being parallel with the laws of nature, and inquiring insight about yourself and the world that is what an individual should be doing. An American sense of justice is partial to a utilitarian worldview but even more pragmatic than that stance.
Utility maximization is an ethic that has roots in Emersonian thought as shown and has trickled down to both sides of the political spectrum. Emersonian individualism has been embraced by either side left or right because Emerson’s words are what America has always been saying for 140 years, he is a timeless essayist because of how dialectical he is in his writings. Emerson will say in Self Reliance that our perception is just as a fact as the sun, our perception is a reality according to our principles. Our principles will create governments, tell history, and admonish wise men because we see that in ourselves and we aspire to perfect heights. Emerson says in History that:
“We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men; --because their law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck, for us, as we in that place would have done or applauded.” (History 4)
This passage is distinctly American at its core and relates to the universal nature that Emerson spoke upon before, that spark of divinity that exists within all of us. That divinity is our perfectionist attitude to tackle life and admonish the heroes of history, it is the facts of all historical periods. Yet it is perfectly American in it is longing for expression and freedom to make oneself happy in search of something. America has different interests going on at once, public or private these interests are economic, utility-maximizing. But America’s zeal and fervor for its nation come from our ability to band together during difficult times and protect each other. That is the lifeblood of all American institutions, we come together when we see that liberty is being infringed when life is being wasted, or when happiness is not maximized. We are paradoxically made strong by our individualism because we know how important to us it is and for a citizen to lose that spark in his life would be despotic in the American perspective Tocqueville will write about this in Democracy in America:
“I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to public welfare, and I have remarked a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to each other.” (Tocqueville 626)
And further, he writes:
“Men attend to the interests first by necessity, afterward by choice: what was intentional becomes instinct; and by dint of working for the good of one’s fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them is a length acquired” (Tocqueville 627)
Emerson is not our opposite or our paradox, but he is a speaking partner and a mentor for many. The more popular American philosophical tradition, that being pragmatism is mainly Emerson’s biggest critics of his philosophy. This is what Emerson would want, a dialectic of both sides going on their path to forge their happiness in life. Emerson wrote about Plato in a way that, he has become for many American thinkers and citizens:
“Thus Homer, Plato, Raffaele, Shakespeare. For these men magnetize their contemporaries, so that their companions can do for them what they can never do for themselves; and the great man does thus live in several bodies, and write, or paint or act, by many hands; and after some time, it is not easy to say what is the authentic work of the master and what is only of his school.” (Representative Men: Plato; Or, The Philosopher)
Emerson magnetized his contemporaries in the same way Plato did, he wrote through them and in a way acted through them cementing his legacy as a master of the art. Consciously or unconsciously the writers around the time of Emerson were ultimately inspired by his works even if the inspiration led them to refute Emerson’s ideas.
“Emerson’s power of contamination was unique even in his century, and even writers who backed away from him could not fail to absorb his stance” (Bloom 203)
Writers such as Melville wanted to disregard Emersonian thought as something that ultimately discounted a realistic human experience. However, Melville uses Emersonian thought as a foundation to build a new method of viewing humans (Ott 26). Emerson is always attempting to show that every individual has the capacity for divinity, for goodness, their universal nature hath give them so much benevolence to echo the words of Emerson. But Melville is the opposite, he believes that man has a capacity for pain, violence, and wickedness as he does for benevolence. Melville will take this stance to its extreme in Confidence Man as pokes and prods at Emerson’s philosophy with the mystic, Mark Winsome, being the stand-in and outright parody of Emerson. As well as Egbert being a stand-in for Thoreau, in the Confidence Man the main character being the Confidence-Man himself as he assumes many identities throughout the text.
The Cosmopolitan challenges Winsome’s philosophical doctrine of labels as they relate to his belief in goodness by saying that his mystical views constantly contradict themselves when put under the scope.
“But is not this doctrine of triangles some way inconsistent with your doctrine labels?” (Melville, CM 224)
The doctrine of labels is Winsome’s rejection of labeling people according to superficial and arbitrary sentiments.
“What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which life furnishes, toward forming a true estimate of any being, are as insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to determine triangles” (Melville, CM 224)
This line is distinctly Emersonian and as the cosmopolitan challenges the doctrine of triangles by pointing it out for its hypocrisy, Winsome responds in an Emersonian fashion:
“Yes; but what of that? I seldom care to be consistent. In a philosophical view, consistency is a certain level at all times, maintained in all the thoughts of one's mind. But, since nature is nearly all hill and dale, how can one keep naturally advancing in knowledge without submitting to the natural inequalities in the progress?”
In Melville’s view Emerson is just as hypocritical as all humans are, like the rest of us is prone to wickedness and the paradoxes of life. Emerson would say himself in Self-Reliance that “A foolish consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. “(Self-Reliance 41). What is interesting is that Melville readily accepts the few that life is constantly in flux, our moods are always changing and our perspective is apt to be altered by experience. However, he drifts away from Emerson’s beliefs coming into his own by alluding to in his novels that we should embrace the flux and embrace the chaotic times of our life. Whereas Emerson wants us to use the flux of nature to create order out of the chaos and to imprint ourselves onto nature. Confidence Man is a book about self-trust, but Melville’s self-trust is more open to interpretation.
What Melville says in the novel is that through self-trust we can learn to trust others. The relationship is cyclical if we can trust ourselves, we can be confident in others and that confidence in others instills deeper relationships between humanity and help form an engrossing identity for all parties. Whereas Emerson’s self-trust was based around solitude insofar to reach the divine, Melville’s interpretation is that should not isolate ourselves for it breeds the more wicked aspects of our nature. Melville will further rebuke Emerson’s thought in Moby Dick where he uses Emersonian individualism for its core characters Ishmael and Captain Ahab. Ishmael’s is more integral for this rebuke of Emerson because Ishmael and Queequeg’s relationship is symbiotic (Ott 27). Queequeg’s sacrifice saves Ishmael’s life as the coffin he built for himself allowed Ishmael to cling to it as the Pequod sank. Through Queequegs death Ishmael could cling to life and realize how important it is to not isolate oneself from the rest of society.
Finally, Melville indirectly criticizes Emerson’s law of compensation throughout the novel Billy Budd. Budd is constantly shown to be a good and noble character one who could argue is Emersonian in nature. But the law of compensation does not affect Budd in the way that it should have. If justice is to reside in his soul, Budd’s goodness should have ennobled him instantly according to the law of compensation, instead, Budd kills Claggart and is put on trial by Captain Vere and is hung for his crimes. The wickedness of Claggart’s actions is not balanced out by Budd’s goodness, he is never dignified and arguably unjustly hung.
Emerson is constantly affecting the people around him and even his two fellow transcendentalists were inspired differently from his thought. Whitman used his will and exercised his reason to keep himself open to all experiences so that an individual may share his experiences with others to construct a framework of everyday life. Thoreau sought the ideals of solitude to forge new experiences and craft new bonds that are not necessarily tied to other people. Emerson whether it be through Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Thoreau, or Hawthorne contaminated their thoughts and magnetized them to exercise their reason in their works. Thusly, the American tradition is largely the same we are so deeply influenced by the ethics of our forefathers. However, Americans take these ethics and craft new experiences with them, these ethics are not necessarily bound by political parties but rather they are crafted for us. We do this so we can take the angled path in life and maximize our utility for different ends.
Conclusion
Emerson popularly said in Politics “Hence, the less government we have, the better, -- the fewer laws, and the less confided power” (Politics 415). This assertion is American to its core and has been interpreted in many ways. However, it may be seen that Emerson is constantly reflecting on what the American experience entails. It is not from government or society that we find truth, power, and justice it is from ourselves we must work to better ourselves to capture these things. If Dickinson is the conversationalist in our lives, pushing us to take risks so that we can keep improving our lives. Emerson is the conversationalist that wants us to rely on ourselves and trust ourselves so that we can be truly happy.
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