• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

Topic for #102: Emerson on Wisdom and Individuality

September 4, 2014 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

On 8/31/14, we discussed three essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"The American Scholar" (an address from 1837): Emerson throws out the image of Man separated out into individual men to enable us to get more kinds of things done. But this division of labor has led to narrowing of minds, so that, e.g. an individual merchant or farmer ends up being focused his whole life on the next sale or harvest and is disconnected from the whole, forgets that he has within him the original, full Man. The scholar, or "Man Thinking," is in the best position to get at this essential humanity, but he too often ends up a narrow-minded specialist. The point of the lecture is to discuss the state of the American scholar of his day, and Emerson gives a bleak diagnosis (America is too wrapped up in the old, dead cultural artifacts of Europe) and a prescription and hope for the future.

Folks will want to listen to our ep. 94 on Schopenhauer for comparison here. Emerson likewise deplores the tyranny of dead scholarship over live thought, and makes a similar point that truly creative (i.e. individual) work always taps into the universal. While the stunted scholar learns only from books, Emerson says this leaves out two of our essential teachers, which are nature itself (which gives us stimuli that incite us to make connections, which is what science is all about) and action (which engages with material unconsciously that can later be turned into intellectual insight).

"Self-Reliance" (published in 1841, but culled from material in sermons given as far back as 1830): Elaborating the idea of "self-trust" described in the previous essay Emerson urges us to be true to ourselves, as "society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." Social expectations push us into little boxes, and we're expected to keep consistent with our past behavior even though human nature is really all about growth. Society uses morality to bully us, when we should be listening to our own conscience. If our concern is truly to build up individuals, we need to change our whole way of living and the structure of our social institutions.

As with the previous essay, Emerson is drawing on a view of the underlying unity of all of our minds, so that being "truly you" is tapping into an Over-soul, a common human nature (or world nature), which gives real, intuitive knowledge a la Plato. As metaphysically and epistemically fascinating as this idea might be, nowhere (not even in his essay called "The Oversoul") is it explored in even a remotely satisfying way, so the resolution of our "Are we all somehow God?" discussion in #101 will have to wait for another text.

"Circles" (also published 1841): We barely had time to talk about this essay, but it provides an an interesting additional perspective on some of the same ideas as the above. The "circles" described are patterns of ideas: how a new idea encompasses and supersedes another. Just as human nature is growth, so is the nature of everything, though whether this is really growth or just change is a matter of dispute. Note that Emerson doesn't generally acknowledge "disputes." His style is evangelical, not argumentative much less expository.

In this essay, however, Emerson at least acknowledges the objection that may well have come to you in reading the previous paragraphs: doesn't this make Emerson a plain old subjectivist? What if being true-to-myself makes me an ass? Is there really such a thing as substantial intuitive knowledge? If "all virtues are initial," i.e. ethical insights are superseded by progressive wisdom just like all other knowledge, then what would correct me from following my whims?

Again, to truly address these issues would require giving a systematic discussion of what this objective underlying unity-self we all tap into really is and how it can give us knowledge, but Emerson gives us this passage instead:

I am not careful to justify myself... Lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.

This at once bites the bullet on the charge of subjectivity and challenges each of us to do the same, the implication being that you'll find if you're being honest with yourself that you will disapprove of your own actions when they are foolish, rash, petty, or selfish. As Emerson says in "The American Scholar," the only purpose of books is to inspire, and his own work has that goal self-consciously in mind, so that it would take some creative scholarship to nail down what "the Emersonian doctrine" really is on any given thing, much less to attribute to him a detailed metaphysics or epistemology.

Buy the essays or read them online here, here, and here.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Filed Under: General Announcements Tagged With: human nature, Individualism, over-soul, philosophy podcast, Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalism

Comments

  1. dmf says

    September 6, 2014 at 8:05 am

    http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/digitaldialogue/2009/11/digital-dialogue-16-emerson-and-self-culture.html

    Reply
    • dmf says

      September 7, 2014 at 7:11 pm

      http://www.cplong.org/digitaldialogue/digital_dialogue_16_emerson_and_self-culture/

      Reply
  2. TJ Downing says

    September 16, 2014 at 3:38 am

    Pretty stoked for this episode.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PEL Live Show 2023

Brothers K Live Show

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • Theo on Ep. 308: Moore’s Proof of Mind-Independent Reality (Part Two)
  • Seth Paskin on PEL Eulogies Nightcap Late March 2023
  • John Heath on PEL Eulogies Nightcap Late March 2023
  • Randy Strader on Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part Two)
  • Wes Alwan on PEL Nightcap February 2023

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in