America's past, present, and future

America, Past, Present & Future (Emerson)

The strength of Emerson's work has always been in its absolute honesty and dedication to communicating in words, the actions we need to take in life in order to be truly alive. While his ideas have not always been universally embraced, Emerson's philosophy sits at the very core of what we would define as "Americanism." His essay, Self-Reliance, spells out not only the "Pioneer Spirit" but the nature of a constant - the core of what it has always meant to be American. That spirit has changed little since the first days of Jamestown and today. Emerson's contribution to American literature has, too, remained a reliable constant. For it is within his words that authors have found the prototype of the self-reliant individualistic hero - that quintessentially American literary character who succeeds on his own terms and works with others only toward a common good. At the core of Emerson's work was his transcendentalist philosophy, his dedication to individualism, and an absolute dedication to frank discussion. From this core comes a discussion present in much of his work that recognizes the archetypes of human individuality, the present, and the future of what it means to be human. To Emerson, we owe our modern-American concept of the individual as part of a community dedicated to the betterment of all through a physically grounded moralism; and our future success as individuals and as a nation will continue to depend upon embracing Emerson's philosophy.

The problem that confronts us in dealing with Emerson is the hardest we shall have to meet, because of his inveterate habit of stating things in opposites...the most difficult part being the realization that the world of understanding and the world of the soul have very little relation to each other," (Mathhiessen, 1968). It is perhaps just a sign of our times, that Emerson is not one of those authors that most people readily quote or cite. He did not write any of the great fiction that is the stuff of high-school English courses, nor did he write the kind of core political discourses in the vein of Machiavelli. Often, he is directly linked with Thoreau, whose works are quotable and Walden can be found on many reading lists, or with Nathaniel Hawthorne who is immediately recognized. How, then, in the company of such famous minds, of such popular writers, does Emerson fare? The answer to that is found in his direct, lasting, and truly significant influence over Thoreau, Hawthorne, and a host of other writers, philosophers, theologians, and thinkers who became part of his Transcendental Club and were influenced by his associated philosophy.

While, "the most immediate force behind American transcendentalism was [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge," (Morse, 1986, 6) it was Emerson who had the most lasting effect, due, in part, to the diversity of his personal philosophy. Emerson's personal theology was well aligned with the Unitarians, his work ethic was certainly quite Puritanical, and his dedication to his friends bordered upon the obsessive. Within his life were seeming Contradictions. but, the truth was, as Emerson writes in Self-Reliance, "there is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till," (Emerson, 1993).

Emerson wanted his readers to jump up and take charge of their lives. This was not a call for self-centered indulgence, but independent thinking and consideration of others (Mitchell, 1997, 79). In looking at issues in American culture over the past two-hundred years to see a consistently strong independence from social and populist dictates. but, there have been modifications to this self-reliance. While the culture has generally valued self-reliance in principle, there have been many episodes in our collective history when conformity was absolute - one has only to look at the 1950's to see a conformist mandate being held over the nation in a fear of Communism. Even now, while we pay lip-service to the idea that we are all individuals and self-reliant, nothing could be further from Emerson's goal - that of the considerate involved person working with and for the community just as much as for themselves. Thus, individualism is what he learned after his father's death when he was only eight, in his youth at Harvard, in his growth to manhood as a school-teacher, and in the very early and traumatic death of his first wife at the age of twenty to tuberculosis. From this very rapid and amazing growth as an intellectual and as an independent man, Emerson founded the Transcendental Club and published his first essay, Nature. From this earliest work, we can see exactly what Emerson's understanding of his place in the world. " Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence," (Emerson, Nature, 1909, 12).

The transcendental movement was laid out in Nature. While transcendentalism was not created by Emerson, he became one of the most outspoken of its proponents in the Americas. It was through this emphasis on understanding our place in nature, in transcending the traditions of strict humanism and embracing nature, that Emerson had a direct and tangible influence on the thinking and writing of Thoreau, Hawthorne, and others (Morse, 1986). Emerson writes, in Nature, "Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man," (Emerson, Nature, 1909, 23). We can see this philosophy of man being the subject of nature instead of the master in Thoreau's Walden, "Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself," (Thoreau, 1910, 115). It is also present in Hawthornes personal philosophy and work, "(he) found much athat was attractive in Transcendental thought: ist self-reliance, its psychology, its antimaterialism, its rejection of institutionalized religion, its concern for symbols, and, finally, its attempts to get closer to the true nature of reality and existence...[and this is found in] two stories, 'The Threefold Destiny' and 'The Great Stone Face'," (Rosa, 1980).

The American Renaissance was founded on the shoulders of Emerson and Thoreau. It was a period in American creativity, science, theology and thought that created the modern world we enjoy today. It began just a few decades after Emerson wrote, Nature, and ended with the commencement of World War I. Emerson and his contemporaries absolutely laid the ground work, built the philosophical foundation, and served as the inspiration for countless others who led the American industrial, cultural, economic, and political boom that formed what we understand the United States to be today. The literary renaissance happened first of all - it began with Emerson, Thoreau, Coleridge and Hawthorne and expanded to every form of literary expression. The most significant period of this time was from 1840 to 1855 when some of the greatest works of the era were produced: Thoreau'sWalden, Hawthorne's the Scarlet Letter and the House of Seven Gables, Melville's Moby Dick, Emerson's Representative Men, and Whitmans's Leaves of Grass. From each of these men poured, in essentially a five-year span from 1850-1855, some of the most important works of literature in the American canon.

Emerson writes, in the Conduct of Life, "Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the theory of success," (Emerson R.W., 1904, 132). He observed, in his time as it is now, that when man invests wholly in the pursuit of power, that it is only culture which can tame the clearly negative effects of his life. This, unfortunatley, is a reflection of Emerson's idealism and not something borne out in our existence. In the period of his most significant writing, Emerson took up the abolitionist cause. He saw that the men in control of the nation, the industrialists, the plantation owners, the politicians all had the commonality of power-lust. He sought to understand that universality of those in power, and observed that, "Culture redresses his balance, puts him among his equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion," (Emerson, the Conduct of Life, 1904, 137).

The problem with the Renaissance was that idealism took hold over reason in many places - particularly in literature. In this, Emerson observed that it is the company of others, our peers, that keeps us grounded in reality. This, though, had to have been a very hard lesson to communicate to the world through anything other than objecdtive story-telling. Emerson's abolitionist views put him in strong opposition to the southern culture.