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Ralph Waldo
Emerson

1803  —  1882
Historical Archive  ·  Portrait Study
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Boston, Massachusetts, 1803  ·  Concord, Massachusetts, 1882

The preacher who quit the pulpit to preach a harder sermon: that the universe resides in each individual soul, and that trust in oneself is the only true religion. He gave Thoreau his first journal. He coined the phrase "self-reliance." He built the intellectual framework for American Transcendentalism and watched the country misunderstand it for the rest of his life.

Essays: First Series (1841): Self-Reliance, Compensation, The Over-Soul. Essays: Second Series (1844). Nature (1836). Representative Men (1850). He lectured across America and was the most famous American intellectual of his century.

He is more interesting than his slogans. He is also harder to live by than his followers admitted.

Consultation

The philosopher who
invented American self-reliance.

Emerson speaks from 1,100+ chunks across six works — Essays: First Series, Essays: Second Series, Nature, The Conduct of Life, Representative Men, and English Traits.

His discourse holds Thoreau's Walden — the student who lived the philosophy harder than the teacher — and Mill's On Liberty as a transatlantic counterpart.

Ask him what self-reliance means in a world of interdependence. Ask him about the Over-Soul. Ask him whether Thoreau found something in the woods that he missed in Concord. Ask him what he actually meant by "a foolish consistency."

Self-Reliance The Over-Soul Transcendentalism Nature Compensation American Scholar Representative Men Individualism The American Mind Emerson and Thoreau
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Self-Reliance  ·  Essays: First Series  ·  1841

Drawn From the Corpus