Emerson's Self-Reliance vs. The American Scholar Today
This essay compares two foundational works by Ralph Waldo Emerson — "Self-Reliance" (1841) and "The American Scholar" (1837) — arguing that the former holds far greater appeal for contemporary American college students. The paper traces Emerson's shifting Transcendentalist philosophy and connects his ideas about identity, self-creation, and rejection of inherited tradition to the experiences of today's students navigating postmodern identity, digital communication, and a rapidly changing global landscape. It also examines why the more Christian-oriented outlook of "The American Scholar" renders it less relevant to a diverse, pluralistic generation.
- Introduction: Two Emersons: Emerson's shifting philosophy between two key essays
- Self-Reliance and the Rejection of Tradition: Why rejecting tradition appeals to modern students
- Identity Reinvention in the Digital Age: Emerson's self-creation paralleled in digital identity
- The Christian Orientation of The American Scholar: Religious focus limits the earlier essay's relevance
- Conclusion: Emerson's Relevance Today: Self-Reliance better fits today's global, plural world
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Draws a clear and specific comparative thesis — rather than treating both essays equally, it stakes a position on which is more relevant and defends it throughout.
- Grounds abstract literary analysis in the concrete lived experience of contemporary college students, making the argument accessible and persuasive.
- Effectively bridges nineteenth-century context (railroads, Christian divinity audiences) with twenty-first-century concerns (digital identity, globalization), giving historical depth to a present-day claim.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses comparative textual analysis anchored to historical context. It reads Emerson's own language closely — quoting and interpreting specific passages — while simultaneously situating each essay within its original audience and moment. This technique allows the writer to show not just what Emerson said, but why the gap between 1837 and 1841 matters for modern readers.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by framing Emerson's philosophical evolution and stating its central claim. It then moves through thematic comparisons: the appeal of rejecting tradition, the parallels between Emerson's era of technological upheaval and the digital age, and finally the limitations of the more religiously specific "American Scholar." A brief works cited section anchors the textual evidence. The argument builds logically from broad philosophical framing to specific textual evidence to contemporary application.
Introduction: Two Emersons
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalist philosophy shifted and changed over the course of his life. Much as Emerson's idea that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds embraces the notion that contradiction is not something to be feared within the hearts and minds of human beings — and that ideological consistency and doctrinal rigor are not goals to be aspired to — Emerson's ideas between "Self-Reliance" and "The American Scholar" show profound shifts in judgment about what a human being and a thinker should aspire to be. There were, over the course of his life, many Emersons. However, the Emerson most likely to be amenable to the sensibilities of college students today is the one found in his later essay "Self-Reliance," rather than in the earlier "The American Scholar," which presents the later essay's ideas in a half-formulated and far more Christian-focused fashion.
Self-Reliance and the Rejection of Tradition
Today's emphasis on postmodernism and the constant restructuring of one's identity over the course of one's education makes the lack of consistency and the disdain for tradition expressed by Emerson in "Self-Reliance" quite attractive to young college students. "Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another," writes Emerson, warning against the failure to constantly reexamine one's own opinions. Emerson's overall philosophy, as expressed in this essay, is that rather than looking to past European models of excellence and artistic expression, young Americans must create their own new models — ones not hemmed in by inherited ideals. To live is to constantly reinvent oneself and one's life.
Today's college students are similarly faced with the need to break pre-existing molds of artistic excellence and to question the ways they have been told to live, both by society and by their parents. The mere reaction against what was constructed as "American" is no longer tenable, as it was during the generation of the 1960s. Successive generations of so-called "slackers" have also shown that mere aspiration to present-moment enjoyment is not necessarily sustaining. The dot-com bust demonstrated that economic prosperity is elusive. Now, individuals must create a new justification for life and a new way of constructing the self in an increasingly virtual world.
Identity Reinvention in the Digital Age
Instead of looking to the past, a new ideal of selfhood is required. Like Emerson, today's college students are facing an age of unsurpassed technological change. For Emerson, that change came in the form of railroads shortening distances and transforming communication and transport. For today's college students, connection across cultures is created with a point and click of a mouse. The disembodied communication of the Internet has transformed this generation's sense of self, making its transparent "I" not a lone soul wandering in the woods, but a transparent eye that can assume a multiplicity of identities — false and true — with a simple change of screen name. Whether this fluidity of identity construction is used for good or for ill remains to be seen, but the challenge is real and must be accepted: Who am I, when what "I" am seems so different in the words on my computer, in my real and lived life, and in the life I lead online?
Conclusion: Emerson's Relevance Today
Ultimately, Emerson's "Self-Reliance" speaks more directly to the contemporary American college student precisely because it abandons the narrower religious and cultural framework of "The American Scholar" in favor of a broader, more flexible vision of selfhood. Its insistence on individual reinvention, its suspicion of received tradition, and its embrace of contradiction all resonate with students navigating a postmodern, digitally mediated world. "The American Scholar," for all its eloquence, remains rooted in a nineteenth-century Protestant context that limits its reach across today's pluralistic landscape. It is "Self-Reliance," with its open and unresolved vision of identity, that continues to challenge and inspire.
Works Cited
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance." 1841. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th ed., vol. 1.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The American Scholar." 1837. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th ed., vol. 1.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.