Analysis Of Self Reliance By Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Following the American Revolution, Americans faced an intellectual crisis. For although, as a nation, America was now separated from England and Europe not only by an entire ocean, but also politically, America had failed to declare a sort of cultural independence from Europe. That is, until the ideas and writings of Ralph Waldo Emmerson. In his writings, he advocated the creation of new knowledge, creating less of a reliance on the ideas of the past, and also advocated ideas on the importance of personal identity in spite of society. This idea on individuality was elaborated on in his work “Self-Reliance”, which expresses the idea that the only true good a person can do, is the good that is within their constitution and that society attempts to erode the individuality of its members. In opposition to this idea, Kenneth Harris seeks to analyze the dissonance between the idealism of Emmerson, with the unidealistic self-interestedness of the term and philosophy itself. The article “Emersonian Self-Reliance and Self-Deception theory” begins by Harris explaining that self-deception theory is not normally applied to historical literature or literature of a philosophical nature, but it is normally applied to non-fiction because of “the many illustrations

Harrison writes that the ideas presented by Emerson contributed to the ideas of the boisterous go-getting culture of America which has predominated American culture, despite being seen as untrue to both America and Emerson himself. Despite viewing these attitudes as attitudes only, they are seen as non-dismissible due to both their pervasiveness in the American psyche and the fact that they are not self-evidentially