Cycles of Personal Belief by Waldo Emerson Forbes.

This is an important book historically, documenting the long friendship and correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle. It should be noted that there is a more up-to-date edition, done in the 20th century (edited by Joseph Slater, Columbia U.P. 1964). Many of the common themes and interests of the two thinkers are indicated in the correspondence, and often enough, one can also see evidence of the differences and how they approached them.

Emerson's first book published in 1836, and including the following: Introduction, Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit, Prospects.

Emerson's famous declaration of independence for American literature.

Excerpted essays from Emerson & Thoreau with additional essay comparing the two.

This is an electronic edition of the combined Essays, First and Second Series published in Australia.

This is an electronic text of the second edition of Emerson's Nature, published as originally in 1849 with a collection of addresses and lectures.

The American Scholar An Address, Man the Reformer, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Friendship, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet, Character, Manners, Essays: Gifts, Nature, Politics, New England Reformers Worship, Beauty -/- English Traits -/- (Harvard Classics, Vol. V.).

This book is Emerson's portrait of the England and the English.

Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth’s fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft, and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust, Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard boughs Fended from the (...) heat, Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat; When the Church is social worth, When the state house is the hearth, Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home. (shrink)

The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made", Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.

This short poem is an Emersonian interpretation of the Hindu concept.

This work is Emerson's set of essays published in 1860 just before the start of the Civil War: 'Fate,' 'Power,' 'Wealth,' 'Culture,' 'Behavior,' 'Worship,' 'Considerations by the Way,' 'Beauty,' 'Illusions.'.

This is Emerson's Second Series of Essays, including: The Poet, Experience, Character, Manners, Gifts, Nature, Politics, Nominalist and Realist, and New England Reformers.

This is R.W. Emerson's address to the students and faculty of the Harvard Divinity School in the year 1838.

selections. Edited with an introd. by Howard Mumford Jones.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world. The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all (...) countries and times. The war rages not only in battle-fields, in national councils, and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's bosom with opposing advantages every hour. On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities. Such an irreconcilable antagonism, of course, must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution. It is the opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Understanding and the Reason. It is the primal antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature. (shrink)

Man The Reformer By Ralph Waldo Emerson Man the Reformer is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 (...) public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience. (shrink)

An American essayist, poet, and popular philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston, but achieved worldwide fame as a lecturer and the author of such essays as “Self-Reliance,” “History,” “The Over-Soul,” and “Fate.” Drawing on English and German Romanticism, Neoplatonism, Kantianism, and Hinduism, Emerson developed a metaphysics of process, an epistemology of moods, and an “existentialist” ethics of self-improvement. He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to (...) John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. (shrink)

Es ist keineswegs ungewöhnlich, wenn ein Philosoph von Rang und Namen von unterschiedlichen Seiten vereinnahmt und zur Projektionsfläche für konkurrierende Ansichten gemacht wird. Dass jedoch gänzlich verschiedene Meinungen darüber bestehen, ob ein solcher Denker überhaupt einen substantiellen Beitrag zu einem bestimmten Bereich der Philosophie geleistet hat, ist eher selten. Zu diesen seltenen Fällen zählt zweifellos Ralph Waldo Emerson, über dessen Bedeutung als politischer Denker innerhalb der philosophischen Tradition eine konstante Uneinigkeit herrscht.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is often seen as the early American prophet of autonomy. This essay suggests a perhaps surprising fellow traveler in this prophetic call: Joseph Smith. Smith opposed religious creeds for the same reason that Emerson denounced them, namely that creeds represent a threat to the autonomy of a person's beliefs. Smith and Emerson also forward similar defenses of individual autonomy in action. Furthermore, they encounter a shared problem: how can autonomy be possible in a (...) society where other individuals hold some kind of authority? I propose that each thinker resolves this tension through an insight with a Kantian echo. A suitably qualified version of authority can sometimes count as an expression of, rather than hindrance to, autonomy. I describe the overlap in Emerson and Smith as a “frontier” version of Kantianism. They favor determining one's own beliefs and actions in a way that looks forward to an open future of possibility. (shrink)

In his lifetime, Ralph Waldo Emerson became the most widely known man of letters in America, establishing himself as a prolific poet, essayist, popular lecturer, and an advocate of social reforms who was nevertheless suspicious of reform and reformers. Emerson achieved some reputation with his verse, corresponded with many of the leading intellectual and artistic figures of his day, and during an off and on again career as a Unitarian minister, delivered and later published a number of (...) controversial sermons. Emerson’s enduring reputation, however, is as a philosopher, an aphoristic writer (like Friedrich Nietzsche) and a quintessentially American thinker whose championing of the American Transcendental movement and influence on Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, William James, and others would alone secure him a prominent place in American cultural history. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz rekonstruiert die Entwicklung von Ralph Waldo Emersons Denken als Teil einer philosophischen Lebenskunst, deren mehrfache Anpassung und Veränderung sich jeweils als Reaktion auf einschneidende Verlusterfahrungen verstehen lässt. Der Tod seiner ersten Ehefrau Ellen Tucker sowie das plötzliche Dahinscheiden seines Sohnes Waldo sind nicht nur biographisch-existenziell prägend, sondern diese Ereignisse markieren zugleich bedeutende Wendepunkte innerhalb von Emersons philosophischem Schaffen. Von der christlich-protestantischen Tradition einer Selbstkultivierung nach Maßgabe einer imitatio christi über die Zurückweisung epistemischer und metaphysischer Gewissheitsansprüche und (...) eine experimentierfreudige pragmatische Weltanschauung führt der gedankliche Weg Emersons schließlich zu einer intensiven Beschäftigung mit der tragischen Dimension einer Welt ohne Gewissheiten und Sinngarantien. Am Ende dieser Entwicklung steht die Einsicht in die Flüchtigkeit und Vergänglichkeit alles Seienden, die sich mit einer Haltung lebensbejahender und heiterer Gelassenheit verbindet. (shrink)

Critics in both philosophy and literary studies have rightly emphasized a “poetics of transition” relating the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson to that of William James. However, less attention has been given to the ways that Emerson's philosophy of rhetoric correlates with James's rhetorical perspectives on psychology and philosophy. Fundamentally rhetorical interests in the contiguous circumstances and contingent reception of thinking link James to Emerson beyond matters of poetics and style. This article correlates Emerson's understanding (...) of a rhetoric of metonymy as the basis of thinking with the principle of contiguity crucial to James's philosophy of mind. This relation between rhetoric and philosophy reiterates a rhetoric of mind that both Emerson and James associate with the older liberal education of the college just at the point that this curriculum is displaced by the professional, specialized disciplines of the emerging university in late nineteenth-century America. (shrink)