Philosophy fundamentals and contemporary applications

Philosophy

Emerson: "Self-Reliance"

America is considered to be one of the most individualistic nations in the world, and in his essay "Self-Reliance" the 19th century New England transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson proudly proclaimed the greatness of looking within the soul for guidance, rather than to worshipping kings and worrying about what society thinks. People should strive to find their own sense of self-worth rather than bolstering the self-esteem of others and agreeing to something simply because it has 'always' been done: "The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor...was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man." Instead, every human being should believe he (or she) is a kind of king: "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius.

On one hand, to read Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" is profoundly inspiring, in that he stresses the inherent worth, insight, creativity and potential genius within every individual: "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." American genius, rather than respecting the old masters, comes from looking at the here and now, seeking to progress, and democracy. Change is the only constant: "Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them." Because of the transient nature of human existence and the conditions of the world, that means what has value is what people are thinking today, not what was thought in the past. An American thinker might have more insight about the modern world than a great thinker of the past. By shutting out the possibility of new thought, the modern Galileos and Caesars may go ignored. And those men, Emerson reminds the reader, were misunderstood in their own respective eras.

But one hand, while Emerson's statements are supposed to be true for all human beings, it is hard not to wonder -- isn't this the type of total self-confidence that can lead to tyranny? How can a nation exist, composed entirely of such complete individualists, with no common background, sense of history, or tradition -- or, most importantly, no sense of responsibility to society? What if every human being is convinced that his own inherent genius gives him the right to rule -- would not society be at war, or at very least, fragmented and unable to govern itself? Emerson, as evident in his other writings did not really seem to believe that all human beings were inherently equal at philosophy. Showing if nothing else his belief that consistency is the "hobgoblin" of little minds, in his earlier essay "Nature" he proclaims: "The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, and what is not hateful, they call the best." In other words, Emerson seems to wish 'the best' to be true to themselves and eschew societal influence, if it hampers their creativity. He is unlikely to be equally supportive of the self-reliant thoughts of someone he considers "foolish."