Emerson believes that everybody has something to offer to the "joint-stock company"-like society. And every man must believe this in order to think meaningfully about himself. Self-Reliance has many introspective, existentialist tendencies; "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think," he says. Each individual ought to be solely responsible for his own thinking, without allowing others to influence him too much. Descartes' ideas permeate this piece, although it is not as philosophically heavy as Meditations.
His Nature, discusses similar Wordsworthian themes of nature, and yet where he seems to go as far as Wordsworth, he withholds such a view of nature in Self-Reliance. It appears that Emerson finds a balance between Cartesian methods and those of Wordsworth.
I'll comment on Brannon's or Caleb's whenever they post
I agree, we must be responsible for our own thinking. Yet, the statement "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think,"seems to contradict that we all have something to offer to society. What if one person thinks that everything that concerns them is already known in society and they do not feel that they have anything to offer to society?
ReplyDelete