Self Reliance Study Guide

Emerson’s Self-Reliance Study Guide

PAIR ONE:

1. Connect the three epigraphs to Emerson’s concept of self-reliance. “Ne te quaesiveris extra” means “Do not seek yourself outside yourself.”

2. Connect the Emersonian statement, “what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men” to Immanuel Kant’s theory of the categorical imperative: “Act only in accord with a principle which you would at the same time will to be a universal law" . How is this in keeping with modern environmental ethics?

PAIR TWO:

3. What do you learn about fate, faith, and perseverance in the following quote: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.” What does Emerson cite as the two barriers to self-reliance?

4. What is the relationship between society and the individual and the NATURAL SELF AND THE SOCIETAL SELF in the following quote: “These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.”

PAIR THREE:

5. Emerson states, “The virtue in most requests is conformity. Self-relaince is its aversion....Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” Describe a time in which you relied upon your convictions and became a nonconformist.

6. Statements in this essay were considered heretical to contemporary (1800’s) traditions of worship, especially the traditions of the Unitarian church which practiced a strictly traditional approach to worship.

Explain how the following statement is heretical: “I remember an answer which when quite young I was. prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, -- "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.”

PAIR FOUR:

7. Emerson states, “It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Why does Emerson admire the ability to be “the independence of solitude” while in a crowd? Describe someone you know who exhibits this quality.

8. Emerson has been criticized for the inconsistencies in his thoughts.

Read the following quote and explain how it allows, if not necessitates contradiction in order to achieve higher thoughts. (Thoreau is famous for his contradictions as well). Emerson states, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. -- `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

How is being willing to contradict yourself in keeping with self - reliance?

PAIR FIVE:

9. What does Emerson learn about human nature from his observations of nature in the following quote:

“ see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact.”

10. Emerson articulates the Transcendentalist belief in intuition as the fundamental means of knowing the word and the self. He writes, “What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In th.at deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin...But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, -- although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.”

-Describe something you know by intuition.

-Describe something you know from being taught.

-What is the relationship between these two pieces of knowledge. Which “fact” is more valuable? Why?

-Which is the more valuable process of knowledge acquisition? Why?

-Emerson believes there are apriori truths in the world: truths that existed before the world existed, that is, they are true by definition, by the nature of existence. Express such a truth and indicate how it is “as much a fact as the sun.”

Explain how Emerson's statement in Question #9 develops an intuited truth about nature and man.