Emerson: Political Writings

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Kenneth S. Sacks (Editor)

Ralph Waldo Emerson is the central figure in American political thought. Until recently, his vast influence was most often measured by its impact on literature, philosophy and aesthetics. In particular, Emerson is largely responsible for introducing idealism into America in the form of living one's life self-reliantly. But in the past few decades, critics have increasingly come to realize that Emerson played a key role in abolitionism and other social movements around the time of the American Civil War. This selection for Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought highlights not only Emerson's practical political involvement, but also examines the philosophical basis of his political writings. All of the usual series features are included, with a concise introduction, notes for further reading, chronology and apparatus designed to assist undergraduate and graduate readers studying this greatest of American thinkers for the first time.

Genres: Politics

280 pages, Hardcover

First published September 23, 2004

About the author

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. "Really, it is beyond my comprehension," Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an "Over-Soul" or "Form of Good," ideas which were considered highly heretical. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. Margaret Fuller became one of his "disciples," as did Henry David Thoreau.

The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Other one- (and two-) liners include: "As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (Self-Reliance, 1841). "The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being" (Journal, 1836). "The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain" (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay "Worship": ". . . the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" (Conduct of Life, 1860). "I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship" (Self-Reliance). "The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature" (English Traits , 1856). "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant." (Civilization, 1862). He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. D. 1882.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.

Reviews

[Arianne X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transcendental Conservative

Emerson reminds us that the individual precedes the state both historically and politically. The central issue is the question of how the state guarantees the safety of the individual and property even with the inequities that property necessitates by the very fact of its existence. Emerson has been praised for his emphasis on the personal rights of the individual against the state and criticized for his pleadings for the protection of property by the state. But then again, in the century following Emerson, we have seen the disastrous results redounding to citizens and the status of their personal rights in societies that abolished private property. It is difficult to see how the personal rights of the individual can exist without the protection of private property holdings with unintended consequences for justice, notwithstanding. Emerson goes to great pains to separate individual rights from property and plead for special protection of these individual rights but this is a separation that may not be possible since persons and property mix themselves in every transaction as Emerson observes. To prevent the individual from becoming the slave of the state, the protection of property, and thus the inequities that it necessitates, may be the price we must pay. Emerson recognizes that as the laws are erected to protect property the great risk is that they will become the tool of those possessing the greatest share of property.

Emerson’s conservatism obtains most profoundly in his statement: “Society is an illusion to the young citizen.” This is an expression of his skepticism that laws can be promulgated to achieve any desired good, that “…any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it law.” This is wisdom, not skepticism. When Emerson states that “the law is only a memorandum.”, he is saying the law is only as good as the people who promulgate the law. In a sense, we get the government we deserve as I believe it was first said by Joseph de Maistre and later repeated by de Tocqueville and Lincoln. Therefore, cultivation and education of the population is of paramount importance. A civilization that can incorporate slavery into the law can justify any law. Emerson tells us that our laws have the “…stamp of our own portrait.” If we want more justice in the law, then we must become more just people. If we want more rational economics, then we have to become more rational people. We cannot simply pass laws making it so.

It is through his transcendentalism that Emerson tries to lighten the burden of this price we pay for civilization. For example, when he says, “Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.”, and “…that the highest end of the government is the culture of men; and that if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land.”, I believe this means that property and politics are only of instrumental, not intrinsic value. Economics based on property and government based on force is what we make necessary to regulate our greed for wealth, our lust for power and the brutish competitive behavior that these tendencies necessitate. Only when we can see the unity of all things we will be able to dispense with these compromises of instrumentality. Emerson tells us that “The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.” We are yet too primitive to attempt this and we are forced rely upon property and force to organize our affairs. It is “transcendental man”, an intuitive thinker who can see beyond the mere surface materialism of things to ‘true’ meaning, that is our next great evolutionary step forward in the Emersonian view.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection. Very political essays with a definite lean toward socialism, communism and anarchism.