After Emerson

After Emerson PDF Author: John T. Lysaker
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253026032
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
The author of Emerson & Self-Culture shares essays covering such themes as identity, experience, ethics, poetry, philosophy, history, and race. John T. Lysaker works between and weaves together questions and replies in philosophical psychology, Emerson studies, and ethics in this book of deep existential questioning. Each essay in this atypical, philosophical book employs recurring terms, phrases, and questions that characterize our contemporary age. Setting out from the idea of where we are in an almost literal sense, Lysaker takes readers on an intellectual journey into thematic concerns and commitments of broad interest, such as the nature of self and self-experience, ethical life, poetry and philosophy, and history and race. In the manner of Emerson, Cavell, and Rorty, Lysaker’s vibrant writing is certain to have a transformative effect on American philosophy today. “An original and stimulating book, manifesting a level of reflection and existential concern of the highest order. It is intellectually and personally honest.” —Robert E. Innis, author of Susanne Langer in Focus “There is something fresh and hence refreshing in the manner in which John T. Lysaker takes up familiar topics. He shows, with both arresting details and an evolving design, how the conduct of life (to use Emerson’s expression) demands a form of thought frequently at odds with contemporary fashions and preoccupations, with institutionally entrenched approaches and all too rigidly policed discourses.” —Vincent Colapietro, author of Experience, Interpretation, and Community “Acknowledged as one of his generations premier Emerson scholars, Lysaker goes beyond his earlier work, Emerson & Self-Culture . . . [T]he writing is stimulating, vibrant, challenging, risky, and fecund. Recommended.” —D. B. Boersma, Choice

After Emerson

After Emerson PDF Author: John T. Lysaker
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253026032
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Get Book Here

Book Description
The author of Emerson & Self-Culture shares essays covering such themes as identity, experience, ethics, poetry, philosophy, history, and race. John T. Lysaker works between and weaves together questions and replies in philosophical psychology, Emerson studies, and ethics in this book of deep existential questioning. Each essay in this atypical, philosophical book employs recurring terms, phrases, and questions that characterize our contemporary age. Setting out from the idea of where we are in an almost literal sense, Lysaker takes readers on an intellectual journey into thematic concerns and commitments of broad interest, such as the nature of self and self-experience, ethical life, poetry and philosophy, and history and race. In the manner of Emerson, Cavell, and Rorty, Lysaker’s vibrant writing is certain to have a transformative effect on American philosophy today. “An original and stimulating book, manifesting a level of reflection and existential concern of the highest order. It is intellectually and personally honest.” —Robert E. Innis, author of Susanne Langer in Focus “There is something fresh and hence refreshing in the manner in which John T. Lysaker takes up familiar topics. He shows, with both arresting details and an evolving design, how the conduct of life (to use Emerson’s expression) demands a form of thought frequently at odds with contemporary fashions and preoccupations, with institutionally entrenched approaches and all too rigidly policed discourses.” —Vincent Colapietro, author of Experience, Interpretation, and Community “Acknowledged as one of his generations premier Emerson scholars, Lysaker goes beyond his earlier work, Emerson & Self-Culture . . . [T]he writing is stimulating, vibrant, challenging, risky, and fecund. Recommended.” —D. B. Boersma, Choice

This New Yet Unapproachable America

This New Yet Unapproachable America PDF Author: Stanley Cavell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022603741X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Stanley Cavell is a titan of the academic world; his work in aesthetics and philosophy has shaped both fields in the United States over the past forty years. In this brief yet enlightening collection of lectures, Cavell investigates the work of two of his most tried-and-true subjects: Emerson and Wittgenstein. Beginning with an introductory essay that places his own work in a philosophical and historical context, Cavell guides his reader through his thought process when composing and editing his lectures while making larger claims about the influence of institutions on philosophers, and the idea of progress within the discipline of philosophy. In “Declining Decline,” Cavell explains how language modifies human existence, looking specifically at the culture of Wittgenstein’s writings. He draws on Emerson, Thoreau, and many others to make his case that Wittgenstein can indeed be viewed as a “philosopher of culture.” In his final lecture, “Finding as Founding,” Cavell writes in response to Emerson’s “Experience,” and explores the tension between the philosopher and language—that he or she must embrace language as his or her “form of life,” while at the same time surpassing its restrictions. He compares finding new ideas to discovering a previously unknown land in an essay that unabashedly celebrates the power and joy of philosophical thought.

Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson

Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson PDF Author: Kate Stanley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108554199
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson locates a paradoxical question - how does one prepare to be surprised? - at the heart of several major modernist texts. Arguing that this paradox of perception gives rise to an American literary methodology, this book dramatically reframes how practices of reading and writing evolved among modernist authors after Emerson. Whereas Walter Benjamin defines modernity as a 'series of shocks' inflicted from without, Emerson offers a countervailing optic that regards life as a 'series of surprises' unfolding from within. While Benjaminian shock elicits intimidation and defensiveness, Emersonian surprise fosters states of responsiveness and spontaneity whereby unexpected encounters become generative rather than enervating. As a study of how such states of responsiveness were cultivated by a post-Emerson tradition of writers and thinkers, this project displaces longstanding models of modernist perception defined by shock's passive duress, and proposes alternate models of reception that proceed from the active practice of surprise.

Sincerely, Emerson

Sincerely, Emerson PDF Author: Emerson Weber
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063089599
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
One tiny act of kindness can have a huge impact. And in this heartwarming, hopeful, absolutely true story, a simple letter does just that. A true story that quickly went viral, this is now a timely, extraordinary picture book. Sincerely, Emerson follows eleven-year-old Emerson Weber as she writes a letter of thanks to her postal carrier, Doug, and creates a nationwide outpouring of love. This is a story of gratitude, hope, and recognition: for all the essential helpers we see everyday, and all those who go unseen. Perfect for sharing alongside such favorites as Pat Zietlow Miller and Jen Hill's Be Kind and Matt de la Peña and Loren Long's Love. There are lots of ways to help the world go round: Some people collect the trash. Some stock grocery shelves. Some drive buses and trains. Some help people who are sick. Some deliver our mail. And some people write letters.

Emerson and Self-Culture

Emerson and Self-Culture PDF Author: John T. Lysaker
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025300022X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
How do I live a good life, one that is deeply personal and sensitive to others? John T. Lysaker suggests that those who take this question seriously need to reexamine the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In philosophical reflections on topics such as genius, divinity, friendship, and reform, Lysaker explores "self-culture" or the attempt to remain true to one's deepest commitments. He argues that being true to ourselves requires recognition of our thoroughly dependent and relational nature. Lysaker guides readers from simple self-absorption toward a more fulfilling and responsive engagement with the world.

Mary Lincoln for the Ages

Mary Lincoln for the Ages PDF Author: Jason Emerson
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 0809336758
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
In this sweeping analytical bibliography, Jason Emerson goes beyond the few sources usually employed to contextualize Mary Lincoln’s life and thoroughly reexamines nearly every word ever written about her. In doing so, this book becomes the prime authority on Mary Lincoln, points researchers to key underused sources, reveals how views about her have evolved over the years, and sets the stage for new questions and debates about the themes and controversies that have defined her legacy. Mary Lincoln for the Ages first articulates how reliance on limited sources has greatly restricted our understanding of the subject, evaluating their flaws and benefits and pointing out the shallowness of using the same texts to study her life. Emerson then presents more than four hundred bibliographical entries of nonfiction books and pamphlets, scholarly and popular articles, journalism, literature, and juvenilia. More than just listings of titles and publication dates, each entry includes Emerson’s deft analysis of these additional works on Mary Lincoln that should be used—but rarely have been—to better understand who she was during her life and why we see her as we do. The volume also includes rarely used illustrations, including some that have never before appeared in print. A roadmap for a firmer, more complete grasp of Mary Lincoln’s place in the historical record, this is the first and only extensive, analytical bibliography of the subject. In highlighting hundreds of overlooked sources, Emerson changes the paradigm of Mary Lincoln’s legacy.

Emerson’s Liberalism

Emerson’s Liberalism PDF Author: Neal Dolan
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299228037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Emerson’s Liberalism explains why Ralph Waldo Emerson has been and remains the central literary voice of American culture: he gave ever-fresh and lasting expression to its most fundamental and widely shared liberal values. Liberalism, after all, is more than a political philosophy: it is a form of civilization, a set of values, a culture, a way of representing and living in the world. This book makes explicit what has long been implicit in America’s embrace of Emerson. Neal Dolan offers the first comprehensive and historically informed exposition of all of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings as a contribution to the theory and practice of liberal culture. Rather than projecting twentieth-century viewpoints onto the past, he restores Emerson’s great body of work to the classical liberal contexts that most decisively shaped its general political-cultural outlook—the libertarian-liberalism of John Locke, the Scottish Enlightenment, the American founders, and the American Whigs. In addition to in-depth consideration of Emerson’s journals and lectures, Dolan provides original commentary on many of Emerson’s most celebrated published works, including Nature, the “Divinity School Address,” “History,” “Compensation,” “Experience,” the political addresses of the early 1840s, “An Address . . . on . . . The Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies,” Representative Men, English Traits, and The Conduct of Life. He considers Emerson’s distinctive elaborations of foundational liberal values—progress, reason, work, property, limited government, rights, civil society, liberty, commerce, and empiricism. And he argues that Emerson’s ideas are a morally bracing and spiritually inspiring resource for the ongoing sustenance of American culture and civilization, reminding us of the depth, breadth, and strength of our common liberal inheritance.

Emerson

Emerson PDF Author: Robert D. Richardson Jr.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520918371
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
Recipient of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man. These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age. Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator. The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature. Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings—from Persian poets to George Sand—and to his many friendships and personal encounters—from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston—evoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures.

Emerson's Protégés

Emerson's Protégés PDF Author: David Dowling
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300197446
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
"Effects of Emerson's professional guidance as mentor, marketer, editor, and promoter for 8 young writers: Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Christopher Cranch, Samuel Gray Ward, Jones Very, Ellery Channing, Charles Newcomb, and Ellen Sturgis Hooper"--

Emerson's English Traits and the Natural History of Metaphor

Emerson's English Traits and the Natural History of Metaphor PDF Author: David LaRocca
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 144117561X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Metaphors are ubiquitous and yet-or, for that very reason-go largely unseen. We are all variously susceptible to a blindness or blurry vision of metaphors; yet even when they are seen clearly, we are left to situate the ambiguities, conflations and contradictions they regularly present-logically, aesthetically and morally. David LaRocca's book serves as a set of 'reminders' of certain features of the natural history of our language-especially the tropes that permeate and define it. As part of his investigation, LaRocca turns to Ralph Waldo Emerson's only book on a single topic, English Traits (1856), which teems with genealogical and generative metaphors-blood, birth, plants, parents, family, names and race. In the first book-length study of English Traits in over half a century, LaRocca considers the presence of metaphors in Emerson's fertile text-a unique work in his expansive corpus, and one that is regularly overlooked. As metaphors are encountered in Emerson's book, and drawn from a long history of usage in work by others, a reader may realize (or remember) what is inherent and encoded in our language, but rarely seen: how metaphors circulate in speech and through texts to become the lifeblood of thought.