GENIUS #4: Ralph Waldo Emerson
A study on Ralph Waldo Emerson, an accomplished writer and leader of the transcendentalist movement in the mid-19th century
Welcome to this edition of GENIUS: a study on the top intellectuals and creatives from modern history. In today’s newsletter, we’re profiling Ralph Waldo Emerson, a new-age writer that reshaped American Literature and introduced the Transcendentalist movement.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 - 1882
Background:
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the epitome of a knowledge-seeker, and a man asking others to seek truth, clarity, and self-reliance.
As a writer, he was one of America’s greatest literary figures who introduced conflict and transformation as new concepts in American Literature. Emerson rejected the traditional, expressionless European style in favor of more self-reflection. His writing felt like a collection of personal thoughts wrapped up into larger essays. Instead of reading about Church sermons, the norm for the time, Emerson’s readers were treated to powerful handbooks on navigating life.
As a person, he was the father of the Transcendentalist movement, which became his outlet to express his beliefs of unity, optimism, and connection to the natural world. Nature was a fundamental source of inspiration for Emerson, serving as the title to one of his most famous essays and the escape from society’s overbearing institutions. To truly achieve the self-reliance and independence that Transcendentalism prescribes, he believed the individual must take ownership of their experiences. This meant grounding philosophy and spirituality in subjective intuition over objective empiricism.
If not for a trip to Europe in the mid-1800s, Emerson may have never become the man he is. Through touring the famous Jardin des Plantes in Paris, he came upon a life-changing epiphany, writing in his journal that:
I feel the centipede in me — cayman, carp, eagle, & fox. I am moved by strange sympathies, I say continually ‘I will be a naturalist.’
In other words, he realized that nature isn’t something we co-exist with but is rather part of us. Life in all forms is part of a collective existence ruled over by the Transcendentalist God. In addition, while in Europe, he met English poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth who helped him discover the greatness within ordinary men. Both realizations shaped his fundamental tenants of Transcendentalism.
The rest of his life was shaped as a writer, lecturer, and mentor to future generations of Transcendentalists and literary geniuses like Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.
Historical Accomplishments:
Began the Transcendental Club in 1836, alongside Frederic Henry Hedge, George Putnam, and George Ripley.
Authored Nature in 1836, an essay on the importance of American originality.
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?’ America needed to stop looking back to its European heritage and start looking about itself. No past moment was more important than the present moment. No tradition was more important than novelty. No generation was better than the current generation. Everything that matters is here now – and that ‘here’ was America.
Gave his renowned talk, “The American Scholar”, in 1837, which articulated a visionary framework for breaking free from European ideals and culture and instead of building a new, unique American identity.
Authored Self-Reliance in 1841, an essay on the need for individuality and non-conformance. This was his first major essay that embodied his Transcendentalist beliefs of avoiding group-think and following one’s instincts. Conformity is the chief Emersonian vice, as we pay unearned respect to symbols of status. The opposite, self-reliance, enables freedom of thought, character, and freedom that is given to every individual. Even conformity to our past actions and beliefs, especially those that no longer meet our current aspirations, is foolish according to Emerson.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Wrote The Over-Soul in 1841 as well, an essay that touches upon the human soul. Its four key themes include the existence and nature of the human soul; the relationship between the soul and the personal ego; the relationship of one human soul to another; and the relationship of the human soul to God. This piece included overt influences of Eastern spirituality like Vedantism, a school of thought within Hinduism. In fact, Emerson has quoted the importance of the Bhagavad Gita as a guide for this essay and Transcendentalism.
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
Led the famous Philosophers Camp at Follensbee Pond in upstate New York in 1958, which inspired a new era of intellectualism, linking art with nature.
In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages.
Spoke at the Smithsonian in 1862, denouncing the institution of slavery. Emerson was a devout abolitionist who staunchly supported emancipation efforts.
The South calls slavery an institution ... I call it destitution ... Emancipation is the demand of civilization
What makes him a GENIUS:
Emerson defied traditional culture surrounding art, religion, and spirituality, and along the way, he inspired a new generation of intellectuals, thinkers, and naturalists. He took on Catholic institutions, Southern slave owners, and even universities. Anyone or anything that held back personal freedom and self-reliance became the ire of Emerson’s lectures and essays.
His insights into Transcendentalism shaped two main ideas: that man and nature are one and that everyone can recognize that they are a uniquely significant human being. This central belief enabled future intellectuals to become better versions of themselves without being limited by religious forms and social habits. For him, ridding oneself of history, tradition, and religion meant surrendering to the force of nature. This meant answering to a divine universe instead of a patriarchal religious institution.
He outlined an ideal society of confident, independent, and self-reliant individuals who would come together from time to time to discuss progressive change. In this utopian world, the self-reliant individual will find their spark of genius, their particular gift to the world, via intellectual curiosity and diversity of opinions.
There will be a proper distance between these gods, who should meet each morning, as from foreign countries, and spending the day together should depart, as into foreign countries.
Quotes / Life Lessons:
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“There are young people of genius who promise “a new world” but never deliver: they fail to find the focus for their genius within the actual horizon of human life”
“As the traveler who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse’s neck, and trusts to the instinct of the animal to find his road, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world”
“I feel the centipede in me — cayman, carp, eagle, & fox. I am moved by strange sympathies, I say continually ‘I will be a naturalist.’”
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
“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.”
“Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. […] Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
Further Readings:
Essay on Nature: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/naturetext.html
Essay on Self Reliance: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html
Essay on The American Scholar: http://digitalemerson.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/text/the-american-scholar
Sources:
https://www.biography.com/writer/ralph-waldo-emerson
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson
https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/ralph-waldo-emerson/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/