Thus, the individual is paramount. But the individual has no value in isolation. This sounds very much like quantum physics to me.

Buell’s treatment of the essays on Napoleon and Margaret Fuller as amplifications and amendments to the earlier “Self-Reliance” essay are useful reminders that by the 1850s the reformist optimism of America’s 1830s and 1840s had begun to darken. Buell makes the nice observation that the “Napoleon” essay appears in 1850, two years after the revolutions of 1848 that had a sobering impact on a United States lurching toward sectarian war.

Buell’s analysis, however, does emphasize lineaments for a “larger public self” featured in mynocturama’s description:

mynocturama: And, yes, this does open up ambiguities as to what we are the organ of when we are being self-reliant – we may very well feel self-reliant, spontaneous and energetic, in the service of some ulterior ideology, unbeknowst to ourselves. And ambiguities concerning the “self” abound in Emerson. For instance, Emerson seems to imply that in the deepest seat of the “private” self lies access to a larger, “public” self, more authentically “public” than what we normally think of as “public” (reputation, status, etc…). So it can get tricky and slippery.

Buell: “Other questions remain. Preeminently: How can we know when we are being self-reliant rather than merely headstrong?” (Buell 69).

I would be interested in the evidence for any limitations that Emerson postulate for that “larger public self” (that would be analogous to the “higher laws” for which Thoreau agues in Walden.

But just to finish the point, I would say that the ambiguities that mynocturama sees opening up can become so overwhelming that they render any search for self-reliance into a self-consuming pursuit of a vague will-o-the-wisp with which Hawthorne and Melville are preoccupied.

mynocturama calls these problems of ambiguity and uncertainty “tricky and slippery.” I wonder if he would accept “naive” and “dangerous” as additional appropriate adjectives? To focus on the “natural self” as a universal ethical touchstone at the beginning of the 21st Century — after a entire century of nightmare killer regimes using “natural reason” or “natural humanity” as ethical rationales — raises, I would think, more problems than it resolves. Emerson would agree with Zeke’s statement, “at one’s most self reliant, one is least selfish,” but Lawrence Buell, at least, argues that Emerson’s writings (unlike those of Thoreau or Whitman) provide too little basis for distinguishing those two conditions.

Interest in Emerson’s ideas is widespread, and large segments of the American population gives unexamined credence to his proposals with little awareness that he advocated them. Nor do our contemporary citizens sense the difficulties for ethical or political action in the Emersonian observation that “the democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat” (quoted and analyzed in Buell 84). In that formulation, we are all trapped on one end or another of a see-saw without liberty or personal independence, and Emerson’s famous call for “Whim” looks more like an epistemological sleight of hand than a fresh beginning.

It seems to me that we do need a different starting point from “self-reliance” as Emerson outlines it to serve as a ground for a future together.

I agree. I think I would state it even more strongly by changing “will not” to “cannot.” Man is part of Nature and Nature (including man) originates in Spirit. As potter expressed better than I can, the quest is to find –and acccept– one’s place IN nature. This can only be done by transcending selfish desires; at one’s most self reliant, one is least selfish.

Briefly, on the question of whether Emersonian Self-Reliance actually contains “a hidden agenda of social conformity,” I’d recommend Lawrence Buell’s very good “Emerson” – he addresses the shadings and meanings of Emerson’s “Self,” and does a good job of making clear and accessible and explicit Emerson’s argument, which exists in a condensed and implicit form in the essays themselves.

And as far as Emersonian “individualism” goes, I’ll just say for now that it is, I think, very much a means to an end, not an end onto itself. Namely, Self-Reliance as a means of being “an organ of activity” of the “immense intelligence” we lie in the lap of. Otherwise, if it weren’t a means to something larger, something more, than it wouldn’t have much point at all. And, yes, this does open up ambiguities as to what we are the organ of when we are being self-reliant – we may very well feel self-reliant, spontaneous and energetic, in the service of some ulterior ideology, unbeknowst to ourselves. And ambiguities concerning the “self” abound in Emerson. For instance, Emerson seems to imply that in the deepest seat of the “private” self lies access to a larger, “public” self, more authentically “public” than what we normally think of as “public” (reputation, status, etc…). So it can get tricky and slippery.

Anyway, thanks again for your post. Look forward to reading more.

I offer three quotations in support of that reading:

“We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its

truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern

truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we

ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all

philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every

man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary

perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due.”

“Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of

opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish between

perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But

perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it

after me, and in course of time all mankind,– although it may chance that

no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as

the sun.”

“Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present there

will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external

way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies because it works and is.”

For Emerson, “self-relliance” might more properly be called “reliance on and conformity to natural process.” Emerson does not mean that individuals are free to say or do whatever they may think is true. Only “thoughtless persons” contradict the fatality of pereception; the true aristocrats of consciousness subordinate their INDIVIDUAL will to the “immense intelligence” of which we are the “agent” rather than pretend to be an independent point of awareness

The irony is for Emerson, the self is most “self-reliant” when it is most integrated into the rhythms and powers of nature. While Emerson definitely opposes relationships of social dependency wherein the self is a craven functionary in a structured world, I think that we misread him when we understand his proposal as a call for radical independence of the self or a liberation into whimsy and personal expression. A self-reliant poet is also the one who is speaking for nature’s processes (and I think that is how Emerson read Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and why both men saw Whitman as Emerson’s true ephebe).

I am fairly certain that Emerson would disagree with Claude McKay’s epigram (quoted above), “If a man is not faithful to his individuality, he cannot be loyal to anybody,” and I am even more certain that McKay would consider Emerson’s idea of self-reliance as containing a hidden agenda of social conformity.

I did get personal regarding “Self-Reliance”. I agree Bobby that this is a good approach. Emerson has fortified me personally. It’s not so abstract. As well I bring my own experience to my reading as you all do.

I also find the connection to Buddhism to be right there at the “naught” that Mynocturama focusses on: at the point where Emerson’s stresses one’s own intuition, own life experiences, indeed the present moment ( though he does not say that specifically) as all there is. I hear him saying pay attention to your own response to that which is in front of you, that is primary. That which came before has relevance insofar as it occupies you and process it in your mind. This is liberating. From this point you grow and realize your own potential. Emerson argues against conformity; it’s an abdication.

Note: according to the last published schedule here I was to post for “Love” tomorrow August 10th. As we are “behind”- I say moving more slowly than we thought and adjusting nicely- I would be most happy to move my date forward until “Spiritual Law” and “Compensation” are under way. Can we publish a new more realistic schedule- the next round of target dates? I do think we need target dates.