Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Emerson’s Life Lessons

Posted for Hannah Williams #3

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a famous transcendentalist who lived from 1803-1882. Transcendentalism is the belief that people have knowledge about themselves and the world that goes beyond what their senses can taste, hear, feel, see, or touch. Emerson was the lead transcendentalist of his time and stressed the importance of self-reliance and the opposition of depending on social structures. In his famous work self-reliance Emerson states “Trust Thyself” based on the connection between man and the divine reality that works within him. He argued that everything that we need resides within us. He urged his audience to examine their relationship with God and nature and learn to trust their own judgement above all others. He also stated that if our natural impulses are bad and they come from our inmost being, then we have little choice than to be ourselves rather than conform to something we are not. Instead he pushed the idea of making your own path in life. Emerson was an overall optimist and refused to accept evil. Emerson described human life as consisting with two major elements. These elements are power and form. In order for life to go on the balance between them must be kept. Emerson also argued that experience cannot be reduced to the smallest observable events and then added up to make up life. Instead it’s the whole presents in life and at work though us. He believed that each man served a particular function but that they could still be greater and use self-improvement.

I think that there are some lessons to be learned from what Emerson believed in. It’s not easy to go against the grain and make your own way in a society that stresses conformity. I agree with the argument that everyone is great but can still work on themselves in some way because the moment you believe you are perfect you stop trying. I have always been a fan of the transcendentalism beliefs and values but I don’t think that a relationship with God is necessarily crucial to be an effective transcendentalist. I think that one can achieve this transcendence by trusting their selves and relying on their selves. I think that more people should learn to truest themselves and love and work on themselves more as well. And I agree with him saying that every man serves a particular function. I think too often people feel as if they are worthless when they do have worth if they would just look within themselves and find it. I’m not sure that I agree with him on power and form being the two major elements though. I mean it is definitely an interesting concept but I’m not completely convinced on it. Neither am I convinced that someone who has naturally bad impulses should accept themselves that way. In my opinion, he did get his views on experience right though. Small moments don’t give us experience in life, the whole presence works through us and teaches us. And we have a lot to learn.

1 comment:

  1. "Transcendentalism is the belief that people have knowledge about themselves and the world that goes beyond what their senses can taste, hear, feel, see, or touch." - That's Rationalism (contrasted with Empiricism). The New England Transcendentalists agreed that we know things before we experience the world via the senses, but they added a notion that the senses deliver information that mirrors what we already knew... that nature somehow embodies ideas that pre-existed our encounter with it, and is ideal as well as material. That's a bit vague, but so were they. Like Kant, they believed our mental categories condition our experience of the world.

    "Neither am I convinced that someone who has naturally bad impulses should accept themselves that way" - there is a famous Emerson quote about being the devil's child, or something, but I don't think Emerson thought we should accept our worst impulses either. His great and still highly relevant message was, as you suggest, non-conformism: be yourself. As a college student struggling with the ideas of old dead philosophers, remember those old dead philosphers once were struggling college students too.

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