e-ISSN: 1698-7802
DOI prefix: 10.14516/fde
“Foro de Educación founded (2003) and directed (2003-till date) by José Luis Hernández Huerta, and published by FahrenHouse (2003-till date). FahrenHouse: Salamanca, España
The self as onwardness: reading Emerson’s self-reliance and experience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14516/fde.2013.011.015.001Keywords:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stanley Cavell, moral perfectionism, United States, education, philosophy of education, American pragmatismAbstract
Recent scholarship has started to open up for social and political readings of the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who John Dewey once called «the Philosopher of Democracy». The present paper attempts to promote the force and potential of this new Emersonianism for philosophy of education showing that Emerson´s notions of self-reliance and aversion to conformity are not inherently anti-social, a-moral or a-political. The paper first argues that Emerson proposes an understanding of self and society which undermines any bipolar opposition of the two concepts already in «Self-Reliance». Secondly, a closer reading of the later essay «Experience» examines his critique of a particular Western conception of thinking in terms of its political consequences. If there is to be hope for the individual self, then, for Emerson, there always has to be hope for a democratic society as well. He tries to remind us that the criterion for a democratic society consists in taking seriously the subjectivity of vision of every single one of its members.
References
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Published
2013-01-01
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Section
Monograph
How to Cite
The self as onwardness: reading Emerson’s self-reliance and experience. (2013). Foro De Educación, 11(15), 29-48. https://doi.org/10.14516/fde.2013.011.015.001
