Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Term Paper

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If there is no meaning but what is made and maintained by humans, than this means humans have it in their power to make more, better meanings. When viewed in the context of spirituality, this means an approach to divinity and morality that does not depend on the arbitrary commands of a priestly class, but rather the useful, equitable decisions made by individuals interested in forging their own relationship with the divine.

The message of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is delivered in a roundabout fashion with wit and creativity, and yet the novel nevertheless manages to produce a commentary on meaning and being that is far more intelligible and insightful than many of the German intellectuals it was spoofing. By focusing on something as ubiquitous and mundane as clothing, Carlyle was able to demonstrate how practically every aspect of human identity and social existence is not essential, but rather ornamental, created by humans for their own use and discarded just as frequently.

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However, this process of creation and maintenance becomes hidden within social custom, and so society is eternally forgetting its own origins. Carlyle's goal, then, is to show how this process of meaning creation and maintenance, once demonstrated with clothes, relates to all other aspects of existence, and particularly spirituality. In the end Carlyle is able to demonstrate how this more accurate understanding of meaning-making can lead to a spirituality free from arbitrary dictates but nevertheless oriented toward a better….....

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"Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle's Sartor", 24 November 2012, Accessed.23 May. 2025,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/sartor-resartus-thomas-carlyle-sartor-76594