Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston Massachusetts, began school in Boston public Latin school. Constant complications associated with illness in his family must have compelled him to contemplate many different ideas and eventually influenced some of his philosophical issues. Emerson had five brothers, two of which suffered from mental illnesses: Edward suffered a nervous breakdown and died in 1834 from mental illness while Bulkeley, due to his mental retardation and emotional instability, spent most of his life in institutions. A third brother died in 1836 because he was tormented with tuberculosis. Until 30 Emerson had lung disease, periods of temporary blindness and overall suffered from poor health. Apparently Emerson’s problems and tensions in his life were severe enough to leave physical evidence in his face. This evidence also suggested the logical paradoxes of his thought.

In 1817 Emerson went to Harvard and became interested in literature and philosophy. He began to follow a family trend with preaching and later studied Theology at Harvard Divinity School and in 1826 was licensed to teach. Seven years after this he began his career as a writer and lecturer. In 1842 Emerson was plagued with yet another death when his son Waldo died. After Emerson initiated his career as a preacher, he later offered America an alternate choice to Calvinism: Transcendentalism. His ideas were developed from the Greek philosopher Plato’s idea that through reason absolute goodness is achievable.

In "Nature" Emerson develops the idea that Nature is the answer to the unknowns of life, or at least an understanding. Knowledge is in nature and exclusively needs to be understood. According to Emerson’s idea, earth provides answers to everything. Later, "Self-reliance" advocates intuition as the means of obtaining higher knowledge. The idea that the answers are in nature continues but Emerson adds that we must trust our interpretations and thoughts to understand them. No one can understand for us. In "Self-reliance" Individualism is carefully stressed; he believes it is best to be an individual who sees things with his own eyes. Emerson connected nature and the individual human soul and believed that being different was what makes it possible to be great which was the idea that led to his famous quotation: To be great is to be misunderstood.

Emerson repeatedly described the dual sides between ideal and real, but the "two laws" of his philosophy remained unbalanced. Emerson supported the idea of mysticism but disagreed with some of the assumptions. From the oriental mysticism, neoplatonic idealism and Kant’s philosophy, Emerson developed his own Transcendentalism. The main idea Emerson developed from Kant is the distinction between the transcendental "reason" and the empirical "understanding".

Although some of Emerson’s ideas fell into the category of Romanticism in both the literary and psychological senses, it left many ideas in the anti-romantic classification. The European view of Romanticism differs greatly from the American view of Romanticism leaving different points of view on whether some of Emerson’s ideas are romantic or not. Emerson’s life, from the death and disease to the preaching and lecturing, greatly influenced much of his writings, ideas and views. It also helped develop his philosophical views.

Julia Chisholm