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  • Writer, lecturer, and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, is

  • regarded as one of the primary founders of American literature

  • and can be credited with inspiring many prolific writers,

  • writing styles, cultural perspectives, and philosophical

  • movements. Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston Massachusetts

  • to Ruth Haskins and William Emerson, his father being

  • a Christian minister descending from a lineage of previous

  • ministers. During his adolescence, Emerson studied at Harvard

  • University, and following graduation, he would go on to teach

  • at his brother's school for young women. After several years

  • of teaching, he would then enroll into Divinity School at

  • Harvard to train to become a pastor. In 1829, he was ordained

  • into Boston's Second Church, and would spend the following 3 years

  • or so as a pastor. During this time, however, Emerson would find

  • an increasing sense of detachment and disagreement with

  • traditional religious practices and ways of thinking. Specifically,

  • he found that contemporary Christianity countered and sedated

  • the very essence of human spirituality that it was supposed

  • to inspire. Around three years after becoming a pastor, and after

  • about 1 year following his first wife's young death of

  • tuberculosis, Emerson resigned from the church. "I have sometimes

  • thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary

  • to leave the ministry.” Emerson wrote in his journal.

  • Following his stint as a pastor, Emerson spent the next

  • years writing and publishing his first major essays while

  • developing a career as a public lecturer. Emerson would make his

  • first significant mark on the public with his controversial

  • lectures that suggested the value of separating from commonly

  • withheld religious ideas and traditions, and in place, argued

  • for infusing new independent, forward thinking that relied on

  • the self for divine experience and understanding. During the following decades, Emerson continued

  • giving lectures and producing several major, influential works of literature. He would

  • soon become recognized as one of the mid- 19th century leading writers and thinkers,

  • inspiring individuals like Henry David Thoreau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson,

  • and innumerable others, as well as being the key figure in helping give way to new cultural

  • perspectives and philosophical movements, especially the philosophy known as transcendentalism,

  • which Emerson is regarded as the father of. Emerson's philosophy can perhaps be best

  • explained in two of his most famous essays; Nature published

  • in 1836 and Self- Reliance published in 1841. Between these

  • two works, Emerson primarily discusses man and nature being a

  • unified, singular whole, the value of trusting one's own intuition

  • and sense of

  • reality, and the realization and forthright expressions of one's

  • unique greatness and truth. More specifically, Emerson posed

  • that all of nature is an expression and permeation of one

  • metaphysical essence of the universe, or god, and that we are

  • all both the expressions and expressors of this singular

  • oneness. “Nature in its ministry to man,” Emerson wrote, “is not

  • only the material but is also the process and the result.” In

  • this, there is no separation between humanity and nature, where

  • humanity wills itself onto nature nor nature onto humanity, but

  • rather, everything is essentially nature interacting with

  • nature. “Standing on the bare ground,” Emerson wrote, “my head

  • bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, all

  • mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am

  • nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being

  • circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

  • For Emerson, the distinction between the trees, the bugs,

  • the dirt, and the stars is all but a phenomenal distinction. Not

  • necessarily a real one. Rather, he believed that god is one

  • thing found in everything and through everything. Every object,

  • every individual and every particle of existence in the eternal

  • now. As such, for Emerson, the transcendent spiritual experience

  • is not found in any outward, previous, or future source, but

  • within the individual in any given moment. Moments where one's

  • own mind illuminates the common features of their surroundings

  • with potency, beauty, and interconnectedness. Alongside this, Emerson also asserted that

  • nature is in a constant state of flux, and that we must live

  • in coordination with its process, trusting our own intuition

  • and flowing with the changing self. In order to do this, we

  • must not hold ourselves to ideas, beliefs, or traditions

  • of the past, including our own. Rather, Emerson suggested

  • that our state is subject to change, and consequently, we might

  • feel or think one way today and the opposing way tomorrow. Instead

  • of fighting this, however, Emerson argued that we must

  • lean into it. “No man,” he wrote, “can antedate his experience

  • or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock,

  • any more than he can draw today the face of a person whom he

  • shall see tomorrow for the first time.” In other words, no

  • one can know what life might be like tomorrow, nor what such life

  • may cause one to think or feel. However, one must move with

  • it, and live according to the present now.

  • Out of this emerges what is perhaps Emerson's most popular

  • concept known as self-reliance. Emerson argued that we often neglect to ever

  • realize the unique perspective and greatness that comes

  • from our particular culmination of experiences and states. Not

  • because we don't have access to such greatness, but because we are

  • often held back and

  • pulled away from it by others and systems of convention. For

  • Emerson, great artists, thinkers, writers and so on aren't

  • necessarily great merely because they possess access to any

  • higher, exclusive source of information or being, but because

  • they are willing to address and express candidly what they feel

  • in any given moment of life, despite how it might reflect on the

  • standard norm. And in doing so, they reveal, not only their

  • unique take on the world, but also the thoughts and sensations

  • hidden within a great many others who feel the same. Arguably,

  • great artists and writers aren't popular because they say

  • something no one has thought of or experienced before, but

  • because they say something that most of us have but weren't sure

  • if we were right to do so. Emerson believed that for the sake of one's

  • work and sense of self, the individual must rely on themselves

  • alone and recognize that what they feel and think is

  • real and legitimate. In a very Cartesian idea, if we can know anything

  • at all it is merely that we exist. And if we can suppose

  • anything at all, it is merely our own experience. This does not

  • disparage our sympathy for others, others' ideas, nor

  • our connection with the natural world, but rather, it serves to prevent

  • the disparagement of our self amidst it all. It

  • serves to promote trust in our own unique interpretations and

  • experiences and encourages us to express their individual

  • merit.

  • In slight contrast to Emerson, it appears reasonable to

  • also argue that perhaps there are variations in the resources

  • and conditions of each individual, and thus, one's ability to

  • trust and/or express themselves is not always equal. If nature

  • and human is a unified whole carried out through a process of

  • self-fulfilling change, is it not also possible that one's own

  • ability to defend and tap into themselves is part of a natural

  • order and fluctuation beyond one's will? Of course, this simply

  • serves to beg the question that if we are all transparent

  • eyeballs; nothings seeing everything, how much say do we have in

  • how much vision we have? Perhaps Emerson's concept of self-reliance

  • can still exist in harmony with this question. Perhaps so

  • long as one authentically stands in their own position

  • of confusion and limitation, they have still remained in accordance

  • with their own relative truth and greatness, and the

  • notion of self- reliance holds steady.

  • Of course, like all philosophies and philosophers, Emerson's ideas in general aren't without

  • flaws or counter arguments. “But it is the fault of our rhetoric

  • that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to

  • belie some other. I hold our actual knowledge very cheap.” Emerson

  • wrote. With this, Emerson himself suggested that he never spoke

  • with any objective certainty or final truth regarding what he

  • thought.

  • For this and other reasons unmentioned, self-reliance and

  • individuality is not easy. It does not simply come from agreeing

  • with poetic prose. To know and trust one's self in the face of

  • consistent change, confusion, and a world that works to

  • consolidate everyone, is perhaps one of the hardest things

  • anyone can do. And furthermore, not always, but certainly some

  • of the time, it comes with the risk of some amount of separation

  • from the common populous and conventional norms. However,

  • perhaps the question one must ask here is, if all we can know

  • and experience is our self, how can any life be lived fully if

  • one denies themselves before even trying? If we hide or hinder

  • ourselves out of the fear of rejection from others, are we not,

  • in essence, rejecting our own self first; the only person we

  • truly and inescapably have to live with? Emerson's work is a reinforcement and reminder

  • of the importance of combating this. To attempt to

  • live in the spirit of individuality, self-honesty, and authenticity

  • in each moment and each context of life. To raise the sail

  • of one's own ship, using the unknowable force of the wind while

  • steering as best we can, always moving forward, finding beauty

  • in the vastness that surrounds us, and creating our self anew.

Writer, lecturer, and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, is

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