Transcendentalism and the American Scholar: Essay

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The second major influence on scholars, Emerson claims, is the past. The history of ideas, the development of science, the influence of philosophy -- these are the forces that shape one's thinking about thought. However, Emerson claims there is a difference between thinking, and reading with a mind to accept someone else's thought at full value. In the essay "Self-Reliance" he clarifies this thought when he writes that "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius" (Essays, 31) . This idea is closely linked to the earlier discussion of nature, in that the past serves to inform, but nature itself serves to inspire. Why should Americans take their thought second-hand from the European continent or elsewhere, when they have as ready access to the stuff of nature as any other people, Emerson asked. This is not to say that scholars should reject study of the past; as Thoreau writes in Walden, "We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old." (Chapter III). It is just to point out that history shapes the scholar but it should not bind him or her.

Finally, Emerson claims that the scholar ought to be influenced by experience. Here he presupposes an influence of practical experience on theoretical knowledge. He says in the speech that "the final value of action, like that of books, and better than books, is, that it is a resource." Emerson has in mind a kind of active intellectual who lives in the world and is aware of what the farmer down the road and the politician at the statehouse are doing. He doesn't believe that scholars ought to isolate themselves from the daily existence of the people they represent, but should be involved in their communities and understand the ways of living displayed by the people.

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This doesn't mean they should follow the crowd, however. But they should let living in the world inform their views and beliefs. Here again, Thoreau proved a worthy student, as he went to jail to avoid paying taxes which he believed supported the Mexican-American war, a war that he couldn't bring himself to support intellectually. When he wrote the line "That government is best which governs least," in the essay "On Civil Disobedience," he was expressing a willingness to follow the dictates of his conscience, as determined through thought and experience. He was acting on American principles of limited government, as a citizen first and then a scholar. Not coincidentally, the individuality he displays in this action is closely aligned with the spirit of Emerson's Transcendentalist views on self-reliance and the debts scholars owe to society.

The impact of "The American Scholar" was widely felt. Emerson's influence became known outside his circle of friends in Concord, Massachusetts, and eventually reached a level of near universal appeal across the young nation. The elements of the Transcendentalism which dealt with spiritual sensibilities eventually came to fold into a religious movement that continues to impact American life today in the form of a reverence for nature even among people who don't believe in God. His ideas regarding self-reliance and practicality came to influence fields such as politics, pragmatic philosophy, and psychology. America got perhaps its greatest poet, Walt Whitman, in the generation following Emerson, after that poet had approached Emerson as a mentor in his early career. While grouping of ideas under the banner Transcendentalism eventually eclipsed to other frameworks, the early and even late influence of these ideas were a major force in the history of American ideas and intellectual life.

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