Emerson: America's Scholar

Emerson: America's Scholar

One of Emerson's most popular essays is "Self-Reliance". He speaks of many things in his books and lectures but this concept "self-reliance" runs throughout his writings. I wanted to acquire an understanding how this concept compares with "rugged individualism" that seemed to be a phrase that identified especially the individuals who sought the new frontier during America's early development.

Self-reliance denotes especially a psychological-philosophical-intellectual aspect of human behavior. He says that an intellectual person (Emerson speaks to and includes every normal person) must have "no engagement in any thought or feeling which can hinder him from looking at it as [something] foreign…The true scholar is one who has the power to stand beside his thoughts or to hold off his thoughts at arm's length and give them perspective." Emerson makes his lectures and books difficult and elusive to disappoint expectations that he will furnish doctrinal conclusions. His commitment is to one of a "method of intellect".

"Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood."

"A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him."

"The commonest remark, if the man could only extend it a little, would make him a genius; but the thought is prematurely checked, and grows no more. All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first."

Emerson makes clear that he considers that knowledge of the world leads to a deeper self-knowledge, "the knowledge of all men that belongs to self-knowledge".

Emerson implies that self-reliance is an intermittent process, perhaps an advocation that is more than a mood, but requires persistent struggle. It lies in independent being, doing, or acting.