Resurrecting Emerson-2

10 CHAPTER ONE DEFINING SELF-RELIANCE There is perhaps no greater affirmation of Emerson’s most famous idea than near the beginning of his essay “Self-Reliance” when he asserts, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius” (S-R 19). This is self-reliance at its core: a steadfast trust in one’s own thoughts that effects a certain universality, a connection to the rest of humanity.1 The first part of this definition—self-trust in one’s own “thought[s]”—is the least controversial aspect of self-reliance because it is generally included in every scholar’s portrayal of the concept. For example, George Kateb describes self-trust as follows; “[I]t is the steady effort of thinking one’s thoughts and thinking them through” (31). However, as Kateb acknowledges, defining self-reliance as merely self-trust is reductive; there are other dimensions of self-reliance, such as its ability to unite humanity through the Universal Mind, that allow us to evaluate its practicability and, consequently, to possess a more nuanced understanding of its complexity. For this argument’s purposes, practicability refers to an idea’s compatibility with societal norms. It is essential to assess self-reliance’s practicability because many scholars treat Emerson’s focus on more concrete subjects in his later work as a sign that he abandoned self-reliance (Bercovitch 342; Bloom 62; Rowe 1; Whicher 52). Self-reliance’s practicability primarily hinges on two questions: Is it possible for a self-reliant individual to participate in society, and can a self-reliant person remain an independent thinker while observing a religion? Scholars have debated these issues because Emerson’s ideal requires “nonconformity” (Emerson, S-R 24). His use of nonconformity is unconventional because it is not particularly concerned with an individual’s arrival at a completely original end; instead, 1 See Deneen 171. 11 Emerson focuses on the “method of intellect” that one employs to reach a certain opinion or action (Kateb 3). If people utilize thought processes that are inherently unique to them, they are not conforming to the masses even if their conclusions mirror those of other individuals. Emerson alludes to this notion in his essay “History” (1841) when he discusses the aforementioned “Universal Mind” (Essays 2). He declares that “[t]here is one mind common to all individual men” (1). In other words, there is one “common” characteristic of all “individual,” or nonconformist, people, which is that they submit to their own modes of thinking. Basically, the “Mind” represents the method of thinking that Kateb regards as the key to Emerson’s thought; “each individual man is one more incarnation” of the Universal Mind, and these additions are recorded by history (Emerson, Essays 2). Emerson offers the example of a revolution to further illustrate this concept, saying, “Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era” (2). At its outset, a revolution is nonconformist in nature because it involves a revolt against certain societal norms, and its leader is certainly nonconformist since his or her ideas provide the impetus for this insurrection. Yet, by most definitions of nonconformity, the leader’s followers are conformists, adopting a mass viewpoint. This passage demonstrates where Emerson differs in his characterization of nonconformity because he depicts two men individually arriving at the same “thought.” In this hypothetical revolution, there is no distinction between leaders and followers; there is merely the chronological order in which they have attained a shared belief, or to put it in Emersonian terms, in which they have submitted to the Universal Mind. Despite reaching the same conclusion, both men have practiced self-reliant thinking by adhering to the sanctity of their own minds. 12 While the Universal Mind supports my contention that Emerson’s conception of nonconformity is practicable because the Mind explains how independent thinking can plausibly lead to conformist behavior, most contemporary Emersonian academics have echoed Stephen E. Whicher’s prominent position that “Emerson’s whole dream of practical power through Selfreliance is just that—a dream” (Whicher 69).2 John Carlos Rowe classifies Emerson as the leader of this “`aesthetic dissent,’” a form of romantic idealism that is “naive” and overlooks “social convention” (1). On the other hand, there are some scholars, such as Kateb and Randy L. Friedman, who disagree with the claims of Whicher’s followers and propose their own ideas about self-reliance. As a result, before examining whether Emerson’s self-reliance pervades Society and Solitude, I need to define this controversial term so that I can adequately evaluate its presence in Emerson’s final major work. Social participation and religiousness lie at the core of my assessment because they are both frequently cited as reasons that self-reliance is impracticable (Gelpi 149; Whicher 64). Social participation involves an individual’s voluntary contribution to a group of people by supporting certain causes and norms that benefit the collective whole. Similarly, religiousness generally entails an association with a group of people that share common creeds and submit to divine authority. In essence, both social participation and religiousness appear to clash with nonconformity by requiring acceptance of others’ beliefs. Conversely, the Universal Mind, which I have just briefly explored, helps us understand how each is not conformist. In this chapter, by extensively investigating the Universal Mind and combining Kateb’s characterization of self-reliance as a form of “democratic individuality” with Friedman’s assertion that the idea 2 See also Newfield 157; Robinson 6; Rowe x. 13 implies an “inner” spirituality, I illustrate that self-reliance is compatible with both social participation and religiousness (Kateb 1; Friedman 165). I. Democratic Individuality and the Universal Mind’s Forces For a man who took such pleasure in examining nature, Emerson spent a considerable amount of his life writing about society and its norms. More specifically, he developed a philosophy that evaluated individuals’ psychological motivations for participating in society. In his view, an individual’s involvement in society stems from an adherence to the Universal Mind, a representation of independent thinking that possesses two forces. The first is a sense of character, which he describes as “a reserved force [acting] directly by presence and without means” (Essays 242). All people possess this quality, but only a few actually realize it. These individuals “do not need society [and] can entertain themselves very well alone,” but this sense of contentment does not prevent them from ultimately entering a community (242). Instead, character is, in itself, an ascertainment of some higher truth that leads these individuals to seek justice in society. Emerson explains the relationship between truth and justice as follows: “Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel” (245). Essentially, individuals who possess character contribute to society by spreading their inherent righteousness to others in various “affairs” (245). It is only through this distribution of morality that a sense of justice and order can truly be achieved, so people with character will always choose to join society even though they can subsist outside of this realm. Democratic societies are labeled as such because of their egalitarianism and representative systems of government, but Kateb’s use of “democratic” primarily refers to the 14 intrinsic morality of democracy that Emerson alludes to with his concept of character. In Kateb’s estimation, democracy is the “only moral political system” because it “pays homage to the idea that all human beings, just by the fact that they are human beings, are morally equal” (181). This argument posits that all people are born with an equal opportunity to think and act morally when living in a democratic society. Not everyone will fully realize or exercise this moral fiber within them, but those who do will often feel compelled to contribute to the collective whole. A similar notion underlies self-reliance. In an ideal democratic environment, people are afforded an equal opportunity to think and work independently, and individuals who practice self-reliance comprehend that their combined efforts ultimately result in collective improvement. David M. Robinson calls this phenomenon the “moral sense or moral sentiment,” a quality that is “measured not by its contribution to the individual but by the individual’s contribution to the larger whole that transcend[s] the particular self” (21). Even if he never explicitly links morality to self-reliance, Emerson implies that the idea encompasses integrity because he depicts selfreliance in an analogous fashion to character. When Emerson discusses the nature of valiant behavior in “Heroism” (1841), he asserts, “Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character...[and] [s]elf-trust is the essence of heroism” (Essays 132). Equating selfreliance, or “self-trust,” to a “secret impulse” is quite similar to when Emerson portrays character as “a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided but whose counsels he cannot impart” (242). It is critical to notice that people take a passive role in Emerson’s descriptions of self-reliance and character; in both cases, an inner “force” or “impulse” affects the individual’s thoughts and actions, but the person is unaware of this instinctual authority within him or her. Thus, character functions as an element of the Universal 15 Mind, a representation of independent thinking that explains how self-reliance is congruous with social participation. Whicher’s argument entirely ignores the democratic aspect of self-reliance. He claims that Emerson’s “wish for independence clashed also with his sense of obligation to be useful to the society he repudiated” (64). This contention errs because it presupposes that an individual cannot independently arrive at the idea that social participation is important. Emerson does not reject the notion of “be[ing] useful,” or contributing, to a society. He only bemoans this behavior when an individual’s participation is solely motivated by others’ thinking and actions. As I have previously expressed, Emerson deems that self-reliant individuals often autonomously arrive at the conclusion that their independently motivated actions can “add” to communities, so Whicher’s implication that social responsibility detracts from self-reliance is invalid (Emerson, Essays 65). The weakness of Whicher’s position primarily stems from a couple of false assumptions, both of which are evident when he declares that Emerson’s “rebellion against the dominion of society encountered two main obstacles: his fear of solitude, and his sense of responsibility” (62). Whicher’s belief that Emerson had a “fear of solitude,” an idea that he bases on Emerson’s unease following his resignation from the Unitarian ministry in 1832, is flawed in two respects (62). First, he conflates Emerson’s life experiences with his philosophy. Emerson was constantly “depending on others and concerned with what they thought of him,” but this personal anxiety about his public perception does not necessarily apply to his concept of a self-reliant individual (Sacks 3). In other words, Emerson’s inability to live outside of society does not signify that all individuals possess the same incapacity; it is highly unlikely that Emerson would completely discard self-reliance because of his failure to fulfill his own philosophical ideal. Second, 16 Whicher treats Emerson’s employment of solitude far too literally. When Emerson uses this term, he refers to the inner serenity of a self-reliant individual’s mind, not social isolation. Emerson emphasizes that solitude is ideally found within the confines and structure of society, affirming that “the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude” (S-R 23). If we consider “crowd” to be an allusion to public life, Emerson’s idea of a self-reliant person is not an aloof individual who lives alone in the woods; rather, it is an individual who remains true to his or her inner convictions while “add[ing] to the world” (Essays 65). Emerson describes this contribution to society as “virtuous,” further indicating that democratic conduct is ideal and part of self-reliance (65). I have demonstrated that self-reliance is compatible with social participation, but the precise nature of self-reliant individuals’ role in society has, up until now, not been explored. To investigate this matter, we must first comprehend Kateb’s distinction between two types of selfreliance: “mental” and “active” (xlii). Mental self-reliance is “the steady effort of thinking one’s thoughts and thinking them through,” and active self-reliance is “independent activity” (31; 135). Active self-reliance always requires mental self-reliance because all activity is “incomplete or inadequate unless one makes the effort to disclose it and make it signify, and such an effort of contemplation and interpretation is of course a mental one” (29); a person always considers, even if it is just for an instant, the motivations and implications of their behavior before and after a particular action. The “independent” quality that Kateb ascribes to active self-reliance therefore stems from the autonomous thinking, or mental self-reliance, that individuals used to contextualize such actions (135). Through their own methods of thinking, self-reliant individuals can fulfill the “highest form of active self-reliance,” their “vocation” (Kateb 151; Emerson, Essays 74). This calling is at 17 the core of a person’s existence; “[o]ne’s active vocation is the expression and completion of one’s being, but it is also the reason for being” (Kateb 24). Emerson says that “[e]ach man has his own vocation...[that is] silently inviting him...to endless exertion” (Essays 74). In this statement, Emerson employs “silently” to stress that vocation is not motivated by external influences; people must grasp this force on their own. Since Emerson portrays this calling as an internal force that affects an individual’s thoughts and actions, we can treat vocation as the second element of the Universal Mind. Vocation mirrors character, the Mind’s other force, in the sense that one must contribute to society in order to fully realize the concept. As Emerson notes, “Until [a man] can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation” (Essays 75). Consequently, the parallels between character and vocation suggest that vocation also functions as a dimension of self-reliance and helps to explain self-reliance’s democratic nature. Basically, for democratic societies to improve, they need people with a variety of different skills to voluntarily coalesce. Self-reliant individuals’ vocations reveal their “unique” talents, so the collaboration amongst people with different vocations allows a society to reach its full democratic potential (Kateb 167). Even though self-reliance can involve social contribution, Emerson does not try to claim that self-reliant individuals must aim to enrich society. Rather, he contends that society’s improvement will happen naturally if people think independently and carry out their own vocations, or “do [their] work” (S-R 23). Robert D. Richardson, Jr. addresses this notion, saying, “When a better society evolves, it will not, in Emerson’s view, come about through a suppression of the process of individuation but through a voluntary association of fulfilled individuals” (322). Essentially, a society improves when self-reliant individuals freely choose to enter its community, a decision that is dictated by a submission to the Universal Mind. While interaction 18 and cooperation do not conflict with self-reliance, “the self-reliant individual cannot be dependent on the contributions or service of others to such an extent as to be unable to reciprocate” (Kateb 145). This statement illustrates that self-reliant people must always retain a sense of self-trust and independence. After this examination of the Universal Mind’s two forces, character and vocation, it is evident that Emerson’s self-reliance involves democratic individuality, a mental and active manifestation of independence that promotes self-reliant individuals’ participation in society and thus demonstrates self-reliance’s practicability (Kateb 17). II. Self-Reliance’s Religiousness: The Over-Soul as a Transcendental God Before I assess the compatibility of religiousness and self-reliance, it is important to scrutinize Emerson’s stance on religion. While my investigation of self-reliance and Society and Solitude seeks to avoid conflating Emerson’s life experiences with his philosophy, his writing is “ravenously religious,” so his personal creed is relevant to our analysis in this section (Kateb 65). In 1832, Emerson left the Unitarian ministry, and he eventually rejected all forms of institutionalized religion. Emerson’s Divinity School Address (1838) articulated many of his reasons for renouncing the church. For instance, he urged his audience to stop following religious customs in order to achieve a true spiritual enlightenment: “Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil” (S-R 114). This advice calls for people to practice their own religion without churches, clergymen, and biblical texts. He felt that Christian preaching bore little resemblance to its historical practice and that the Bible’s true messages had been lost over time. Emerson expresses this opinion after describing Jesus’s original ideas about man. He laments, “But what a distortion did [Jesus’s] doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in 19 the next, and the following ages!” (107). Despite Emerson’s criticism of the Christian church, it is crucial to note that he conveys a sense of devotion to God and Jesus, signaling that he still believed in traditional biblical figures at this point in his life. Emerson’s allusions to God and Jesus in his work underscore a larger point, which is that Emerson never fully abandoned Unitarianism even though he left the pulpit. Unitarianism stresses the importance of Jesus’s “moral teachings” and the presence of one God, so Emerson’s references to these two figures and his emphasis on their virtuous nature in the Divinity School Address indicates that his Unitarian roots still had a discernible impact on his essays and lectures (Richardson, Jr. 47). Moreover, Emerson’s rejection of the church exemplifies Unitarianism’s resistance to institutional affiliation. In William Ellery Channing’s “Unitarian Christianity,” the famous Boston minister espouses this idea when he affirms, “Our earnest prayer to God is, that he will overturn, and overturn, and overturn the strong-holds of spiritual usurpation” (qtd. in Richardson, Jr. 47). For Emerson, the “distortion” of Jesus’s “doctrine and memory” is a form of “spiritual usurpation,” a gross abuse of Unitarian tenets (S-R 107; Richardson, Jr. 47). As a result, Emerson’s departure from the church can actually be viewed as a necessary action to uphold his Unitarianism. While Emerson never relinquished some of his Unitarian beliefs, he certainly strayed from a biblical understanding of religion by establishing his own transcendental creed. In Nature (1836), Emerson frequently uses the outdoors as a medium through which the divine is ascertained. For example, he says, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me by my eyes) which nature cannot repair” (8). Since Emerson’s employment of “return” suggests that we have deserted “reason and faith” by leaving nature, this reflection implies that society is a place where true 20 piety is forsaken. In nature, we can restore our piety because “[e]very natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact” (26). This tenet is not attributable to the Bible or Unitarianism; it is a transcendental principle, one that laid the foundation for a philosophical movement in the 19th century. In addition to his transcendentalism, Emerson extends the scope of his work to the experience of human existence. He says, “Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason” (27). “Reason” is another term for the Universal Mind or the Over-Soul, a concept that pervades one prominent work in Essays.3 “The Over-Soul” (1841) is Emerson’s most authoritative advancement of his ideas about religion and elucidates how religiousness is compatible with self-reliance. In the five years that elapsed between the publication of Nature and Essays, Emerson maintained his steadfast belief in the notion of one soul that was inherent to all humans. In this essay, he refers to that spirit as the “Over-Soul,” an essence “within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other” (Essays 141). By noting that this universal soul is found “within” every individual, Emerson indicates that people can identify this spirit without mediation. Though there are “other[s]” that submit to the Over-Soul, an individual can grasp this essence without conforming because the Over-Soul is an “inner source” of divinity (Essays 141; Friedman 165). A person’s acceptance of the Over-Soul involves an adherence to “divine impulse[s],” which lead him or her into the “region of all virtues” (Essays 141). At first, this process seems to conflict with self-reliance since the “divine impulse” appears to dictate the individual’s actions. However, as I stressed in my discussion of character and vocation, the decision to act on a force 3 Emerson uses Reason, the Universal Mind, the Over-Soul, and the universal soul interchangeably throughout the course of his career. I adopt the scholarly consensus that these terms all refer to the same notion because there is no compelling evidence to suggest otherwise. 21 of the Universal Mind (or Over-Soul, in this case) can only result from a look inward, so a person’s recognition of the Over-Soul is therefore a product of self-reliant thinking. Even if a belief in the Over-Soul arises from independent reflection, self-reliant individuals’ dependence on the Over-Soul could potentially signify “God-reliance” instead of self-reliance (Hughes 107). In order to investigate whether or not self-reliance is actually “Godreliance,” it is first vital to determine if Emerson regards the Over-Soul as the God of his particular creed (107). There is an undeniable evocation of God in Emerson’s depictions of the Over-Soul, which he calls a “prophet,” “supreme,” “eternal,” “perfect,” and, most importantly, a “deity” (Essays 141). Conversely, Emerson mentions God throughout “The Over-Soul,” so some readers might contend that Emerson still regards the Unitarian God as his creed’s supreme being and that the Over-Soul is subordinate to God’s omnipotence. I disagree with this interpretation. In fact, the moments when Emerson invokes God’s name signal that God is contained in every individual; basically, the Over-Soul is God. For instance, Emerson declares, “Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God” (154). Unlike the Unitarian God, the Over-Soul is a collective being because it absorbs its believers, who “becom[e]” God. Clearly, Emerson considers the Over-Soul to be the God of his transcendental dogma. The Over-Soul is Emerson’s God figure, so a reliance on this spirit technically qualifies as “God-reliance,” but not in the way that Gertrude Reif Hughes intends it (107). In Emerson’s depiction of the Over-Soul, each individual is a “part” of this God (Essays 141). Accordingly, a reliance on the Over-Soul is, at least partially, a reliance on oneself and the independent thinking that allows this God to be discerned. As Whicher asserts, “[T]he soul of man does not merely, as had long been taught, contain a spark or drop of breath or voice of God; it is God” (21). In order 22 to realize one’s own divinity, an individual must break away from the “god of tradition” and the “god of rhetoric” who Christianity worships (Emerson, Essays 154). Emerson addresses this idea by mentioning that Jesus “speaks always from within” (151). Though Jesus has seemingly lost power in Emerson’s new view of religion, Emerson uses Jesus’s name as a rhetorical device to lend authority to his thoughts. Through his employment of the Over-Soul, Emerson establishes religion as a self-reliant ascertainment of the God within oneself. III. Conclusions In this chapter, I have argued that Emerson’s religiousness and Kateb’s concept of democratic individuality are compatible and form two critical dimensions of self-reliance. Democratic individuality stems from self-reliant individuals’ realizations of their character and vocations, the two forces that compose the Universal Mind. The Mind is also known as the OverSoul, the God of Emerson’s transcendental religion. Consequently, even if I have portrayed democratic individuality and religiousness as two different dimensions of self-reliance, they are certainly related elements because they both involve an intense level of introspection. Donald L. Gelpi illustrates this link when he says, “The decision to follow one’s creative genius despite any sacrifice or social intimidation disposes the soul to the creative influx of divine life. The moment of creativity reveals the divine. Creativity not only heightens self-awareness; it yields ultimate self-understanding” (44). If Gelpi’s idea of “creativity” is comparable to Emerson’s notion of vocation, it is apparent that this adherence to one’s inner calling “reveals” a sense of divinity that transcends the self. In other words, since practicing one’s vocation is part of democratic individuality, social participation can actually lead to religiousness. Ultimately, both democratic individuality and religiousness contribute to “self-awareness” and “self-understanding,” which are both fundamental to self-reliance.