Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-Reliance and Other Essays

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Follow the thoughts of essayist, poet and American Transcendentalism founder Ralph Waldo Emerson as he discovered his own belief system in the anthology "Self-Reliance and Other Essays." In "Self-Reliance," Emerson explained that standing on one's own two feet against society was essential to forming a strong union with God. Once this essay was published, it received both wild praise and hurtful backlash from different factions of America. However, Emerson pushed through the negative criticism, stood against the crowd, and found himself stronger in his faith than he ever had before. Emerson found that self-reliance, no matter the situation, would always help the individual persevere and become stronger. Because Emerson wrote for the common man, many of his essays and poems are relatively simple and straight-forward; he wanted audiences to understand his thoughts and identify with his beliefs. He also wanted to wake them up from the conventional modern life that he believed had often placated them. Emerson's writings were meant to help the reader transcend to a more thoughtful mindset. His essays discuss themes of philosophy, poetry, history, politics, ethics, and literary criticism, all of which helped break people from what he believed were their mediocre lives. He saw that humanity could become stronger as a whole if people would take the steps to make themselves and their minds stronger. The texts in "Self-Reliance and Other Essays" will not only inspire readers, but they will inspire self-examination and evaluation as well.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Digireads.com
• Seitenzahl: 80
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Januar 2013
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 5mm
• Gewicht: 131g
• ISBN-13: 9781420946932
• ISBN-10: 1420946935
• Artikelnr.: 37599703

Autorenporträt

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882)[5] was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, 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, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature". Following this work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."[6] Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance",[7] "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet", and "Experience." Together with "Nature",[8] these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world. He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement,[10] and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. "In all my lectures," he wrote, "I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man."[11]Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist.