Who Was Ralph Waldo Emerson?
The depth to which one knows a person has more to do with one’s familiarity with their ideas than their biography.
Hence, a historian of ideas knows the identity of humanity across time better than a mere historian.
In this respect, one can know many dead individuals better than alive ones — for the modern customs involved in ‘getting to know others’ seldom involve sharing the ideas one idiosyncratically holds but instead tend to devolve into sharing surface-level biographical pieces of information.
The Transcendental Beliefs of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson is not the purpose of this essay; to ask “Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson?” is to ask about the ideas he propounded.
And to ask of the ideas he propounded isn’t merely to expound on their contents but on how they arose for Emerson and how he managed to hone in on such materializations of creative energy — namely, through transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism is a school of American philosophy from the early-mid 19th century that Emerson spearheaded and was known for its metaphysical closeness to Immanuel Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Indeed, Emerson saw no difference between his own Transcendental Philosophy and Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. As stated in his essay “The Transcendentalist”:
It is well known to most of my audience that the idealism of the present day acquired the name of Transcendental from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to the skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a fundamental class of ideas or imperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendental forms. The extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man’s thinking have given vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, to that extent that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought is popularly called at the present day Transcendental.
The core idea of the “transcendental” concept is that our understanding of everything is limited by our thoughts and the perspectives we apply to our experiences.
Our focus on specific aspects of our experiences means we overlook most other potential insights. Moreover, when we step outside our current perspective, we’re confronted with complete uncertainty from a knowledge standpoint.
Hence, the Transcendentalism of Emerson is quite distinct from the idealism of George Berkeley, wherein the external world’s existence and essence are wholesale denied — transcendentalism does not imply that the external world lacks reality or essence; instead, it proposes that from our experiential (i.e., the only) vantage points, the true nature of that reality remains elusive.
If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, it still falls, but no one knows of the nature of this fall –not until it is retroactively found and subjected to experiential parameters of knowing.
Indeed, a salient part of the elusiveness of such outwardness is its determining factor in the character of our experience and vice-versa.
For what is excluded from our experience in any given case is brought to the domain of in-determinability from the experiential purview, as it cannot be accessed therefrom.
Furthermore, what is brought thereto, in its inaccessibility, still possesses comparative and causal ties to that which is focal in our experience, thereby affecting it in its qualitative and intentional character — i.e., involving the character of perception and thought, without being apparent to perception and thought.
Emerson was adamant that this peculiar state of affairs was perfectly natural, even and especially in its divine aspects — as he says in his first essay entitled Nature: “The eye is the best of artists.”
Our cognitive-perceptual simplifications tend towards not just the symmetrical but that which is parallel to our pretensions, which, for most, are grounded in means-ends belief systems.
Whatever is is natural — a skyscraper is just as natural as a deep-sea geyser, which human eyes have never gazed upon. And what is “transcendent” from a metaphysical and phenomenological standpoint are the virtually infinite number of such things humans have never and will never gaze their eyes or intellects upon.
When the means-ends structure of our cognitive-perceptual biases are reconfigured unto nature itself and our relation thereto, the intellectual life is what arises –i.e., science, art, religion, and philosophy.
These are all modes of being wherein the will enables itself to partially take hold of the eye in its ‘best artistry’ –as further stated in Nature, “the health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.” The scientific, artistic, religious, and philosophical will is that which pushes such horizons of ‘visual health.’
Part of such health is realizing that each moment is qualitatively and intentionally utterly idiosyncratic from the next and preceding one. Each moment of experience has its own distinctive identity –all that is ‘the same’ herein is the stream of consciousness (as William James calls it) upon which such moments arise and pass.
This ‘sameness’ from consciousness mediates all that is different from moment to moment, constituting its difference. Many of the cognitive-perceptual simplifications we possess ground this stream and are themselves the standards of our worldviews, including (if not especially) their moral dimensions.
He famously stated in Nature, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There, I feel that nothing can befall me in life — no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair.” Emerson believed that society and its institutions corrupt the purity of the individual and that people are best when they are self-reliant and independent –though, as we’ll see, his real-life dependence on institutions is far greater than that of some of his contemporaries.
His transcendentalism is characterized by its optimistic faith in the individual’s potential and its relatively moderate call for personal introspection and communion with nature.
Emerson and Thoreau
In contrast, Henry David Thoreau, a protégé and close associate of Emerson, adopted a more extreme version of transcendentalism. Thoreau’s masterpiece, Walden (1854), documents his experiment in simple living on the shores of Walden Pond, where he sought to strip away the trappings of society to lead a life of deliberate simplicity.
Thoreau’s approach to transcendentalism was more radical than Emerson’s, as he not only philosophized about the importance of nature and individualism but also lived out these principles to their extremes.
Where Emerson was a renowned academic and public intellectual, spending his days as a man of letters back and forth between his farmhouses, forest homes, the ivory tower, and his oratory engagements, Thoreau, by contrast, never graduated from Harvard and received no degree during his life.
Where Emerson advocated for governmental policies to reform society for the betterment of the intellect, Thoreau’s commitment to civil disobedience, as outlined in his essay of the same name, demonstrated his willingness to act on his beliefs, even to the point of breaking the law. As Thoreau states in the opening of Civil Disobedience (1849):
I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto — “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like 1 to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
On this front, Emerson’s thinking mirrors that of some existentialists, such that the great bulk of humanity cannot –as individuals or groups — be trusted without some form of governance, without some Hobbesian Leviathan. While transcendentalists believe that the essence of humanity is goodness — starkly over against existentialism — they also believe that humanity is configured such that most of this goodness remains latent.
Thoreau’s comments on government, as well as the general essence of excessively sanguine (verging on anarchic) forms of libertarianism, naively assume each human being to be as morally and intellectually robust as the essayists in question were known to be.
Of course, excess governance is a palpable wrong for such human beings, but what of those morally and intellectually deficient to degrees that border on irrevocable? Without society, without some collective governing body, human beings are highly liable to abuse or kill such individuals unjustly –Emerson’s moral-intellectual compass has room for such cases, whereas Thoreau’s is much narrower in scope.
“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.”
One of the key distinctions between Emerson’s and Thoreau’s Transcendentalism lies in their approaches to individualism and action. Emerson’s writings suggest a more contemplative individualism, emphasizing the importance of self-reliance and personal growth through introspection and a spiritual connection with nature. Emerson believed in the transformative power of ideas and the importance of spreading these ideas to reform society. The underlying spirit driving this will to reformation in Emerson’s philosophy is harmony with nature, including other human beings which nature necessarily places us in relation to –hence, there is a stronger sense of cooperativeness with others in Emerson’s thoughts than in Thoreau’s.
Thoreau embodied a more activist individualism, believing that personal and societal reform required not just contemplation but also direct action –and that otherwise, societal conformity was a form of moral-spiritual complacency, even in cooperative efforts unto ideal changes. Where Emerson, even in an earnestly believed proposition, would likely keep his mouth shut, Thoreau could not. As Emerson states of Thoreau in the posthumous address he gave for his friend:
So much knowledge of Nature’s secret and genius few others possessed, none in a more large and religious synthesis. For not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to the truth itself; and as he discovered everywhere among doctors some leaning of courtesy, it discredited them. He grew to be revered and admired by his townsmen, who had at first known him only as an oddity. The farmers who employed him as a surveyor soon discovered his rare accuracy and skill, his knowledge of their lands, of trees, of birds, of Indian remains, and the like, which enabled him to tell every farmer more than he knew before of his farm; so that he began to feel as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority of the character, which addressed all men with a native authority.
Furthermore, while Emerson and Thoreau valued nature as a source of truth and inspiration, their engagement with the natural world differed in intensity and purpose. Emerson saw nature as a means to understand the self and the divine, advocating for a symbolic and spiritual appreciation of the natural world.
Thoreau, however, pursued a more immersive and experiential relationship with nature. Thoreau’s writings reflect a detailed observation of the natural environment and a deep commitment to environmental conservation, predating modern ecological thought, while Emerson himself admits that Thoreau had a far superior grasp on the practical side of nature than he:
He was equally interested in every natural fact. The depth of his perception found likeness of law throughout Nature, and I know not any genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the single fact. He was no pedant of a department. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He thought the best of music was in single strains; and he found poetic suggestion in the humming of the telegraph-wire.
Surely, Thoreau did not see Emerson as “in disgrace” for his cooperativeness with the American government.
Thoreau’s perception of Emerson was complex, marked by a blend of deep respect and a subtle assertion of his more rigorous practice of Transcendentalist principles. Thoreau, who was Emerson’s friend and at one time his protégé, held Emerson’s intellectual contributions in high esteem. Thoreau often acknowledged his intellectual indebtedness to Emerson.
In his essay The American Scholar, which Thoreau no doubt absorbed, Emerson declared, “Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst,” a sentiment that reflected the high value both men placed on intellectual engagement.
However, Thoreau’s dedication to living out Transcendentalist ideals in his daily life suggested that he saw this –over against the highest love of the worthiest of books — as the more authentic expression of their shared philosophy.
Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond, where he sought to “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,” as he put it in Walden, was a direct application of Transcendentalist principles, emphasizing simplicity, mindfulness, and deep communion with nature.
This contrasted with Emerson’s more theoretical approach, which, while revolutionary, focused less on personal austerity and more on the intellectual and spiritual liberation of the individual mind.
As Emerson wrote in Self-Reliance, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,” a call to personal authenticity that Thoreau took to heart but which he arguably pursued with greater literalness and intensity.
Thoreau’s life and writings were a living testament to Emerson’s principles, embodying a more radical and experiential interpretation of transcendentalism. Thoreau’s approach did not diminish his reverence for Emerson but rather brought to the fore his conviction that philosophy must be lived and acted out as much as it is thought.
Through his actions, Thoreau demonstrated his belief that the accurate measure of a philosophy is not just in its articulation but in its realization in the fabric of everyday life.
While Emerson lectured and wrote about the corrupting influences of society and the importance of self-reliance, Thoreau put these ideas into practice, not only at Walden Pond but also through acts of civil disobedience, such as his refusal to pay the poll tax in protest against slavery and the Mexican-American War.
Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience resonates with his belief in the moral imperative to act, stating, “I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.” And by that token, Emerson was more subject than man, while Thoreau was more man than subject –a summation both men would have affirmed.
In this respect, the biography of Thoreau reflects Emerson’s philosophical thoughts more than Emerson’s biography does — which is comparatively modest.
