According to Emerson, what makes someone a fully realized person?

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Advisor: Charles Capper, Professor of History, Boston University; National Humanities Center Fellow
Copyright National Humanities Eye, 2014

In his essay "Self-Reliance," how does Ralph Waldo Emerson define individualism, and how, in his view, can it affect society?

Understanding

In "Cocky-Reliance" Emerson defines individualism equally a profound and unshakeable trust in one's own intuitions. Embracing this view of individualism, he asserts, can revolutionize society, not through a sweeping mass motility, only through the transformation of one life at a time and through the creation of leaders capable of greatness.

Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1878

Text

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Cocky-Reliance", 1841.

Text Type

Essay, Literary nonfiction.

Text Complication

Form xi-CCR complexity band. For more information on text complexity see these resource from achievethecore.org.

In the Text Analysis section, Tier 2 vocabulary words are defined in pop-ups, and Tier iii words are explained in brackets.

Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.

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Common Core State Standards

• ELA-Literacy.L.11-12.4 (Make up one's mind the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases.)
• ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.1 (Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as drawing inferences.)

Avant-garde Placement United states History

• Key Concept 4.one – Two.A. (…Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility fostered the ascension of voluntary organizations to promote religious and secular reforms…)
• Key Concept 4.1 – III.A. (A new national culture emerged…that combined European forms with local and regional cultural sensibilities.)
• Skill Type 3: Skill 7 (Analyze features of historical show such as audience, purpose, point of view…)

Advanced Placement English Language and Limerick

• Reading nonfiction
• Evaluating, using, and citing master sources
• Writing in several forms most a variety of subjects

Teacher'due south Note

"Cocky-Reliance" is central to understanding Emerson'due south thought, but information technology tin can be difficult to teach because of its vocabulary and sentence structure. This lesson offers a thorough exploration of the essay. The text analysis focuses on Emerson's definition of individualism, his analysis of society, and the way he believes his version of individualism can transform — indeed, save — American society.

The first interactive practise, well-suited for private or small group work, presents some of Emerson'south more famous aphorisms equally tweets from Dr. Ralph, a nineteenth-century cocky-help guru, and asks students to interpret and paraphrase them. The second invites students to consider whether they would embrace Dr. Ralph'southward vision of life. It explores paragraph 7, the most well-adult in the essay and the only one that shows Emerson interacting with other people to whatsoever substantial degree. The exercise is designed to raise questions well-nigh the implications of Emersonian cocky-reliance for one's relations with others, including family, friends, and the broader club. The excerpt illustrates critic's Louis Menand's contention, cited in the background note, that Emerson'south essays, although generally taken as affirmations, are "deeply unconsoling."

This lesson is divided into two parts, both attainable below. The teacher's guide includes a background note, the text analysis with responses to the close reading questions, access to the interactive exercises, and a follow-up assignment. The student's version, an interactive worksheet that tin exist east-mailed, contains all of the above except the responses to the close reading questions.

Instructor's Guide (continues beneath) Background notation Text assay and close reading questions with respond key Interactive exercises Follow-upwardly assignment

Pupil Version (click to open) Interactive PDF Groundwork note Text analysis and close reading questions Interactive exercises

Teacher's Guide

Groundwork

Background Questions

1. What kind of text are we dealing with?
2. For what audience was information technology intended?
3. For what purpose was it written?
4. When was it written?
5. What was going on at the fourth dimension of its writing that might accept influenced its composition?

Ralph Waldo Emerson died in 1882, but he is still very much with us. When you hear people assert their individualism, perhaps in rejecting help from the authorities or anyone else, you hear the vocalism of Emerson. When you lot hear a self-help guru on Tv set tell people that if they change their fashion of thinking, they will change reality, you hear the vocalization of Emerson. He is America's apostle of individualism, our champion of mind over thing, and he gear up along the core of his thinking in his essay "Self-Reliance" (1841).

While they influence us today, Emerson's ideas grew out of a specific time and place, which spawned a philosophical move called Transcendentalism. "Self-Reliance" asserts a key belief in that philosophy: truth lies in our spontaneous, involuntary intuitions. We do not accept the infinite here to explain Transcendentalism fully, but we can sketch some out its key convictions, a fleck of its historical context, and the way "Self-Reliance" relates to it.

By the 1830s many in New England, especially the young, felt that the organized religion they had inherited from their Puritan ancestors had get cold and impersonal. In their view information technology lacked emotion and failed to foster that sense of connexion to the divine which they sought in religion. To them it seemed that the church had taken its optics off heaven and fixed them on the fabric world, which under the probings, measurements, and observations of science seemed less and less to offer assurance of divine presence in the globe.

Taking direction from ancient Greek philosophy and European thinking, a pocket-sized group of New England intellectuals embraced the idea that men and women did not need churches to connect with divinity and that nature, far from existence without spiritual meaning, was, in fact, a realm of symbols that pointed to divine truths. According to these preachers and writers, we could connect with divinity and sympathize those symbols — that is to say, transcend or rise to a higher place the material world — just by accepting our own intuitions virtually God, nature, and feel. These insights, they argued, needed no external verification; the mere fact that they flashed across the mind proved they were truthful.

To hold these beliefs required enormous cocky-confidence, of course, and this is where Emerson and "Self-Reliance" come into the picture. He contends that in that location is within each of united states an "ancient Self," a first or basis-floor self beyond which at that place is no other. In "Cocky-Reliance" he defines information technology in mystical terms as the "deep force" through which nosotros "share the life by which things exist." It is "the fountain of action and thought," the source of our spontaneous intuitions. This self defines non a particular, individual identity but a universal, human being identity. When our insights derive from it, they are valid non only for us but for all humankind. Thus we tin be assured that what is true in our private hearts is, as Emerson asserts, "true for all men."*

Just how tin nosotros tell if our intuitions come from the "ancient Self" and are, therefore, true? Nosotros cannot. Emerson says we must accept the self-trust to believe that they practise and follow them as if they practice. If, indeed, they are true, eventually everyone will have them, and they will exist "rendered back to us" as "the universal sense."

Daguerrotype of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Until the residual of the world accepts our behavior, notwithstanding, nosotros volition be out of step; we will be nonconformists. Emerson tells us not to worry. The essence of self-reliance is resistance to conformity. Indeed, nonconformity is a sign of strength: "Whoso would exist a human being," he writes, "must be a nonconformist." In a sense "Self-Reliance" can be seen as a pep talk designed to strengthen our resolve to stand up to society's efforts to make us suit. "Nothing," Emerson thunders, "is at last sacred just the integrity of your own listen." This is individualism in the extreme.

While "Self-Reliance" deals extensively with theological matters, nosotros cannot overlook its political significance. It appeared in 1841, simply four years subsequently President Andrew Jackson left part. In the ballot of 1828 Jackson forged an alliance among the woodsmen and farmers of the western frontier and the laborers of eastern cities. (Meet the America in Class® lesson "The Expansion of Republic during the Jacksonian Era.") Emerson opposed the Jacksonians over specific policies, chiefly their defense of slavery and their back up for the expulsion of Indians from their territories. But he objected to them on broader grounds as well. Many people like Emerson, who despite his noncomformist idea still held many of the political views of the old New England aristocracy from which he sprang, feared that the ascension of the Jacksonian electorate would plow American democracy into mob rule. In fact, at 1 betoken in "Cocky-Reliance" he proclaims "now we are a mob." When you see the word "mob" here, do non picture a big, threatening crowd. Instead, think of what nosotros today would telephone call mass guild, a order whose civilisation and politics are shaped non by the tastes and opinions of a small, narrow elite just rather by those of a broad, various population.

Emerson opposed mass-party politics considering it was based on naught more than numbers and majority rule, and he was hostile to mass culture because it was based on manufactured entertainments. Both, he believed, distracted people from the real questions of spiritual health and social justice. Like some critics today, he believed that mass society breeds intellectual mediocrity and conformity. He argued that it produces soft, weak men and women, more prone to whine and whimper than to embrace great challenges. Emerson took as his mission the job of lifting people out of the mass and turning them into robust, sturdy individuals who could confront life with confidence. While he held out the possibility of such transcendence to all Americans, he knew that not all would respond. He assured those who did that they would achieve greatness and become "guides, redeemers, and benefactors" whose personal transformations and leadership would rescue democracy. Thus if "Self-Reliance" is a pep talk in support for nonconformists, information technology is too a manual on how to live for those who seek to be individuals in a mass lodge.

Describing "Self-Reliance" as a pep talk and a manual re-enforces the way most people have read the essay, as a work of affirmation and uplift, and at that place is much that is affirmative and uplifting in it. Yet a conscientious reading likewise reveals a darker side to Emerson'south self-reliance. His uncompromising embrace of nonconformity and intellectual integrity can breed a dank airs, a lack of compassion, and a lonely isolation. That is why one critic has called Emerson'southward work "deeply unconsoling."^ane In this lesson we explore this side of Emerson along with his bracing optimism.

A word about our presentation. Because readers tin can take "Self-Reliance" equally an advice manual for living and because Emerson was above all a teacher, we found it engaging to bandage him not as Ralph Waldo Emerson, a nineteenth-century philosopher, but as Dr. Ralph, a twenty-first-century cocky-aid guru. In the end we ask if you would embrace his approach to life and sign up for his tweets.

*Instructor'south Note: For a more detailed discussion of the "aboriginal Self," meet pp. 65-67 in Lawrence Buell'due south Emerson.

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^{1. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New York; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001) p. 18.↩}

Text Assay

Paragraph 1

Close Reading Questions

Activeness: Vocabulary
Learn definitions by exploring how words are used in context.

What is of import nigh the verses written by the painter in judgement ane?
They "were original and non conventional."

From evidence in this paragraph, what do you think Emerson ways by "original"?
He defines "original" in judgement 6 when he says that nosotros value the work of Moses, Plato, and Milton because they said non what others take idea, but what they idea.

In sentences ii and 3 how does Emerson suggest we should read an "original" work?
He suggests that nosotros should read it with our souls. We should reply more to the sentiment of the work rather than to its explicit content.

In telling u.s. how to read an original piece of work, what do yous think Emerson is telling usa about reading his work?
In sentences 2 and iii Emerson is telling us how to read "Self-Reliance" and his work in general. We should nourish more than to its sentiment, its emotional bear on, rather than to the thought it may incorporate. The reason for this advice will become apparent every bit nosotros discover that Emerson'southward essays are more collections of inspirational, emotionally charged sentences than logical arguments.

How does Emerson define genius?
He defines information technology equally possessing the confident conventionalities that what is true for you is true for all people.

Considering this definition of genius, what does Emerson mean when he says that "the inmost in due time becomes the outmost"?
Since the private or "inmost" truth we find in our hearts is truthful for all men and women, it will eventually be "rendered back to us," proclaimed, as an "outmost" or public truth.

Why, co-ordinate to Emerson, practice we value Moses, Plato, and Milton?
We value them because they ignored the wisdom of the by (books and traditions) and spoke not what others thought but what they thought, the "inmost" truth they discovered in their own hearts. They are great because they transformed their "inmost" truth to "outmost" truth.

Thus far Emerson has said that we should seek truth by looking into our own hearts and that nosotros, similar such great thinkers equally Moses, Plato, and Milton, should ignore what we detect in books and in the learning of the by. What implications does his advice hold for didactics?
It diminishes the importance of education and suggests that formal education may actually make it the style of our search for cognition and truth.

Why then should nosotros bother to written report "keen works of art" or even "Self-Reliance" for that affair?
Because bully works of fine art "teach united states to abide by our spontaneous impressions." And that is, of course, precisely what "Self-Reliance" is doing. Both they and this essay reassure us that our "latent convictions" are, indeed, "universal sense." They strengthen our power to maintain our individualism in the face of "the whole weep of voices" who oppose usa "on the other side."

Based on your reading of paragraph 1, how does Emerson define individualism? Back up your answer with reference to specific sentences.
Emerson defines individualism equally a profound and unshakeable trust in ane's own intuitions. But near any sentence from 4 through 11 could be cited every bit support.

[1] I read the other twenty-four hour period some verses written past an eminent painter which were original and non conventional. [2] The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject exist what information technology may. [three] The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. [4] To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you lot in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. [5] Speak your latent conviction, and it shall exist the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to the states by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. [vi] Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit nosotros ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set up at nada books and traditions, and spoke not what men merely what they idea. [7] A human being should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his heed from inside, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. [8] Even so he dismisses without notice his thought, considering it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come dorsum to us with a certain alienated majesty. [9] Groovy works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. [10] They teach us to abide past our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then near [especially] when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. [11] Else [otherwise], to-morrow a stranger volition say with masterly skillful sense precisely what we take idea and felt all the time, and we shall exist forced to take with shame our own stance from another.

Paragraph 34 (excerpt)

Close Reading Questions

Note: Every adept self-assistance guru offers advice on how to handle failure, and in the excerpt from paragraph 35 Dr. Ralph does that by describing his platonic of a cocky-reliant young human. Hither we see Dr. Ralph at perhaps his nigh affirmative, telling his followers what self-reliance can exercise for them. Earlier he does that, notwithstanding, he offers, in paragraph 34, his diagnosis of American guild in 1841. The example of his "sturdy lad" in paragraph 35 suggests what self-reliance can exercise for society, a theme he picks upwardly in paragraph 36.

What, according to Emerson, is incorrect with the "social state" of America in 1841?
Americans have become weak, shy, and fearful, an indication of its true problem: it is no longer capable of producing "great and perfect persons."

Given the political context in which he wrote "Self-Reliance," why might Emerson think that American lodge was no longer capable of producing "great and perfect persons"?
In Emerson'due south view, by giving power to the "mob," Jacksonian democracy weakened American civilization and gave rise to social and personal mediocrity.

What is Emerson'south solution for America's problem, and how does that solution illuminate what he is trying to practice in "Self-Reliance"?
His solution is to create "men and women who shall renovate life and our social state," and this is the goal of his essay.

[1] The sinew and centre of man seem to exist drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. [2] We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. [3] Our historic period yields no great and perfect persons. [four] Nosotros want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants [needs], have an ambition out of all proportion to their applied force [aim at goals they cannot accomplish], and do lean and beg solar day and night continually…. [5] We are parlour soldiers. [6] Nosotros shun the rugged boxing of fate, where strength is born.

Paragraph 35 (extract)

Close Reading Questions

What does Emerson mean by "miscarry"? What context clues help us discover that meaning?
Here "miscarry" means "to fail." We tin can see that by noting the parallel structure of the first two sentences. Emerson parallels "miscarry" and "fails" by placing them in the same position in the first ii sentences: "If our young men miscarry…" "If the immature merchant fails,…"

What is the human relationship between the young men who expel and the immature merchants who fail in paragraph 35 and the "timorous, desponding whimperers" of paragraph 34?
They are the same. The young failures illustrate the point Emerson makes in the previous paragraph virtually the weakness of America and its citizens.

According to Emerson, how does an "un-self-reliant" person answer to failure?
He despairs and becomes weak. He loses "loses heart" and feels "ruined." He falls into self-compassion and complains for years.

Emerson structures this paragraph as a comparing between a "city doll" and a "sturdy lad." With reference to paragraph 34 what does the "sturdy lad" represent?
He represents the kind of person Emerson wants to create, the kind of person who volition "renovate" America's "life and social country."

What are the connotations of "urban center doll"?
The term suggests weakness with a hint of effeminacy.

Compare a "city doll" with a "sturdy lad."
Urban center Doll: defeated by failure, urban, narrows his options by studying for a profession, learns from books, postpones life, lacks confidence and self-trust.
Sturdy Lad: resilient, rural, at least good in rural skills, "teams it, farms it", realizes he has many options and takes advantage of them, learns from experience, engages life, possesses confidence, trusts himself.

What point does Emerson brand with this comparison?
Here Emerson is really trying to persuade his readers to embrace his version of self-reliance. His comparison casts the "sturdy lad" in a positive low-cal. We desire to be like him, non like a "city doll." Emerson suggests that, through the sort of men and women exemplified by the "sturdy lad," cocky-reliance will rescue American life and society from weakness, despair, and defeat and restore its capacity for greatness.

What practise y'all observe about the progression of the jobs Emerson assigns to his "sturdy lad"?
They arise in wealth, prestige, and influence from plow paw to member of Congress.

We take seen that Emerson hopes to raise above the mob people who will themselves be "great and perfect persons" and restore America's ability to produce such people. What does the progression of jobs he assigns to the "sturdy lad" suggest about the roles these people will play in American gild?
As teachers, preachers, editors, congressmen, and land owners, they will be the leaders and opinion makers of American society.

[one] If our young men miscarry in their showtime enterprises, they lose all eye. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. [2] If the finest genius studies at i of our colleges, and is non installed in an office within one year later in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, information technology seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the residue of his life. [three] A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms information technology, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township,* and and then along, in successive years, and e'er, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. [4] He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, just lives already. He has not ane chance, simply a hundred chances.

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*Emerson does not hateful that the "sturdy lad" would purchase a town. He probably means that he would buy a large piece of uninhabited land (townships in New England were six miles square). The point here is that he would get a substantial landowner.

Paragraph 36

Close Reading Questions

Why does Emerson think that "a greater self-reliance must piece of work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men"?
On one level Emerson is suggesting that when individuals become self-reliant, their new plant ability will bring fresh strength and robustness to everything from their work to their family life. When individuals change, institutions change. On another level, he is suggesting that as leaders in American guild, the newly empowered self-reliant will bring nearly social change.

[i] It is easy to encounter that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their didactics; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their clan; in their holding; in their speculative views.

Follow-Upward Assignment

In a well organized essay explain what society would exist similar if everyone embraced Emerson's thought of self-reliance. Your assay should focus on Emerson'due south attitudes toward constabulary, the family, and education. Be sure to utilize specific examples from the text to support your statement.

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Vocabulary Pop-Ups

• admonition: gentle, friendly criticism
• latent: hidden
• nada: ignored
• lustre: brightness
• firmament: sky
• bards: poets
• sages: wise men and women
• alienated: made unfamiliar by being separated from us
• else: otherwise
• sinew: connective tissues
• timorous: shy
• desponding: discouraging
• renovate: change
• miscarry: fail
• modes: styles
• speculative: theoretical

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Images:

• Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson engraved and published past Stephen A. Schoff, Newtonville, Massachusetts, 1878, from an original cartoon by Samuel Due west. Rowse [ca. 1858] in the possession of Charles Eliot Norton. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-04133.
• Daguerreotype of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 4 10 5 black-and-white negative, creator unknown. Courtesy of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

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Source: https://americainclass.org/individualism-in-ralph-waldo-emersons-self-reliance/

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