Student Work for Philosophy 3387

American Philosophy

Emerson on Power (and Tradition)

I. Emerson creates new discursive and institutional space for the organic intellectual

II. Emerson also creates a conception of power

A. His view of power is multileveled

• 1. it encompasses and distinguishes the powers of the nation, the economy, the person, tradition and language

• 2. Emerson celebrates the possession, use and expansion of certain kinds of power

• 3. His perspective on power accentuates in an unprecedented manner the fluid, protean, and dynamic elements in human relations and transactions with nature.

• 4. Emerson's views on power are closely related to a historical consciousness

• 5. Emerson's views on power relates a mythic self with the land of America

• 6. powers of nation equals the powers of rhetoric

III. Emersonian theodicy

A is optimistic, moralistic and activistic

• 1. the basic nature of things is congenial to and supportive of the moral aims and progress of the chosen or exceptional people

• 2. basic nature of things is itself incomplete and in flux, always the result of and a beckon to the experimental makings, workings and doings of humans.

• 3. Those making, workings and doings of humans have been neither neither adequately understood nor fully unleashed a. This will happen when people actualize their potential and learn self- reliance

B. His theodicy also asserts that the only sin is limitation

C. This sin is overcomable

D. it is beautiful and good that sin exists to be overcome 1. Ahlstrom suggests the "American Religion" that Emerson created which extols human power, vision and newness and conquest domesticates and dilutes the critiques of Ahlstrom

IV. Emerson's obsession with sight and vision

A. promotes separateness over solidarity

B. promotes detachment over association

C. promotes individual intuition over collective action

D. disassociates vision from politics, sociality and materiality which West says is deceptive because Emerson's own "epistemology of moods" precludes it

• 1 also deceptive in that his epistemology of moods has a teleological dimension
  • a. the telos is engendered in order to parallel himself with the land of America

• 2. he uses vision not to get rid of time but to place himself at the beginning of time

  • a. this is closely related to his mythic conception of individual as America

V. His myth of the frontier converges with his theodicy

A. myth cuts geographical and cultural discourse into two

• 1. metropolis/ civilization

• 2. wilderness/ savagery

• 3. frontier is in between the two

B. feature of myth

• 1. associated with progress in America with emigration out from metropolis

• 2. faith that frontier experience has transforming capacity of emigrants

VI. Emerson felt guilt about lack of activism

A. because of his nature as a solitary, contemplative person

B. because he wanted the best of two worlds

• 1. bourgeois prestige

• 2. world of solitary contemplation

C. His mysticism is missing key to lack of activism according to West

• 1. his mysticism is motivated by his political cynicism and opposed to it

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© Copyright 1996 Carrie Hunter

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