Emerson's Metaphysics

Emerson's Metaphysics PDF Author: Joseph Urbas
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498524516
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book gives the first complete, fully historicized account of Emerson's metaphysics of cause and effect and its foundational position in his philosophy as a whole. Urbas tells the story of the making of a metaphysician and in so doing breaks with the postmodern, anti-metaphysical readings that have dominated Emerson scholarship since his philosophical rehabilitation began in late 1970s. This is an intellectual biography of Emerson the metaphysician but also a chapter in the cultural life-story of a concept synonymous, in the Transcendentalist period, with life itself, the story of the principle at the origin of all being and change. Emerson's Metaphysics proposes an account of Emerson's metaphysical thought as it unfolds in his writings, as it informs his philosophy as a whole, and as it reflects the intellectual and religious culture in which he lived and moved and had his being. This book will be of interest to philosophers, literary scholars, and students of English, philosophy, and intellectual and religious history who are interested in Emerson and the American Transcendentalist movement.

Emerson's Metaphysics

Emerson's Metaphysics PDF Author: Joseph Urbas
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498524516
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book gives the first complete, fully historicized account of Emerson's metaphysics of cause and effect and its foundational position in his philosophy as a whole. Urbas tells the story of the making of a metaphysician and in so doing breaks with the postmodern, anti-metaphysical readings that have dominated Emerson scholarship since his philosophical rehabilitation began in late 1970s. This is an intellectual biography of Emerson the metaphysician but also a chapter in the cultural life-story of a concept synonymous, in the Transcendentalist period, with life itself, the story of the principle at the origin of all being and change. Emerson's Metaphysics proposes an account of Emerson's metaphysical thought as it unfolds in his writings, as it informs his philosophy as a whole, and as it reflects the intellectual and religious culture in which he lived and moved and had his being. This book will be of interest to philosophers, literary scholars, and students of English, philosophy, and intellectual and religious history who are interested in Emerson and the American Transcendentalist movement.

The Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Joseph Urbas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429787316
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study offers the first comprehensive account of Emerson's philosophy since his philosophical rehabilitation began in the late 1970s. It builds on the historical reconstruction proposed in the author's previous book, Emerson's Metaphysics, and like that study draws on the entire Emerson corpus—the poetry and sermons included. The aim here is expository. The overall though not exclusive emphasis is on identity, as the first term of Emerson's metaphysics of identity and flowing or metamorphosis. This metaphysics, or general conception of the nature of reality, is what grounds his epistemology and ethics, as well as his esthetic, religious, and political thought. Acknowledging its primacy enables a general account like this to avoid the anti-realist overemphasis on epistemology and language that has often characterized rehabilitation readings of his philosophy. After an initial chapter on Emerson's metaphysics, the subsequent chapters devoted to the other branches of his thought also begin with their "necessary foundation" in identity, which is the law of things and the law of mind alike. Perception of identity in metamorphosis is what characterizes the philosopher, the poet, the scientist, the reformer, and the man of faith and virtue. Identity of mind and world is felt in what Emerson calls the moral sentiment. Identity is Emerson's answer to the Sphinx-riddle of life experienced as a puzzling succession of facts and events.

Emerson's Pragmatic Vision

Emerson's Pragmatic Vision PDF Author: David Jacobson
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271040688
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description


Aesthetic Transcendentalism in Emerson, Peirce, and Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting

Aesthetic Transcendentalism in Emerson, Peirce, and Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting PDF Author: Nicholas Guardiano
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498524540
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
Aesthetic Transcendentalism is a philosophy endorsing the qualitative and creative aspects of nature. Theoretically it argues for a metaphysical dimension of nature that is aesthetically real, pluralistic, and prolific. It directs our attention to the rich complexity of immediate experience, the possibility of discovering new aesthetic features about the world, and the transformative potential of art as an organic expression. This book presents the philosophy in its relationship to its historical roots in the philosophic and artistic traditions of nineteenth-century North America. In this multidisciplinary study, Nicholas L. Guardiano brings together a philosophic and literary figure in Ralph Waldo Emerson, the scientifically minded philosopher Charles S. Peirce, and the plastic arts in the form of American landscape painting. Guardiano evaluates this constellation of philosophers and artists in global perspective as it relates to other historical theories of metaphysics and aesthetics, while simultaneously performing a cultural analysis that identifies an essential feature of the American mind. Aesthetic Transcendentalism thus possesses abiding significance for our vital interactions with nature, daily experiences, and contemplations of great works of art. Aesthetic Transcendentalism in Emerson, Peirce, and Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting will be of interest to scholars of American philosophy and American art history, especially specialists of Charles S. Peirce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Hudson River School painters. It will also appeal to philosophers working on systematic metaphysical theories of nature.

The Faith of Emerson

The Faith of Emerson PDF Author: Daniel A. Campana
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666926191
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Get Book Here

Book Description
In The Faith of Emerson: American Transcendentalism, Kantian Epistemology, and Vedantic Thought, Daniel A. Campana makes the case for seeing Emerson as a prophet for a new concept of religious faith that transcends the boundaries of particular religious traditions. By tracing Emerson’s intellectual development from his early years to his last works, Campana demonstrates the progression in Emerson’s thought from a dogmatic to a dynamic sense of living faith. He presents Emerson’s synthesis of Kantian and Vedantic philosophies as the key to understanding his life and works from a new perspective, forging a novel connection between Emerson’s transcendental idealism and developments in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. In both cases, post-Kantian epistemology provides the impetus for a notion of faith as an active, interpretive process that is not bound to religious truth claims. Vedantic monism supplies an image for how one might understand this interpretive process in its larger, metaphysical context. This book provides us a vision of life as participation in a narrative greater than ourselves, a narrative that may be spoken of in the language of various religious traditions but is not constrained to any one.

Individuality and Beyond

Individuality and Beyond PDF Author: Benedetta Zavatta
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190929219
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Individuality and Beyond, Benedetta Zavatta offers a new philosophical interpretation of the impact that Emerson's work had on a range of Nietzsche's ideas. Zavatta provides new insights into this relationship by drawing on the marginal markings and annotations that Nietzsche made in his copies of Emerson's works, which have been discovered in Nietzsche's personal library.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Prentiss Clark
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476647755
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
In his 1837 speech "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, "life is our dictionary," encapsulating a body of work that reached well beyond the American 19th century. This comprehensive study explores Emerson as a preacher, poet, philosopher, lecturer, essayist and editor. There are nearly 100 entries on individual texts and their personal, historical and literary contexts. Emerson's work is placed within his relationships with family members, fellow Transcendentalists and transatlantic friends, and his commitment to ethics, self-culture and social change. This book provides the fullest possible exploration of Emerson's writing and philosophy. Far ahead of his own time, the man enthusiastically questioned institutions, communities, friendships, history, individuality and contemporaneous approaches to environmental stewardship.

Emerson as Philosopher

Emerson as Philosopher PDF Author: Richard Gilmore
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303132546X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book considers the role of postmodernism (skepticism towards metanarratives and anti-essentialism) in Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy by putting it in conversation with key 20th and 21st century thinkers such as Beauvoir, Coates, Derrida, Paz, Rorty, and Zizek. Postmodern Emerson shows how Emersonian skepticism to metanarratives such as sexism, racism, Beauvoiran "serious values," and others, can help us face some of society's gravest contemporary social and philosophical challenges. Methodologically, the book exemplifies Emersonian postmodernism by defying traditional philosophical metanarratives about the difference between high and low culture or serious and ridiculous subjects, and Emerson with what would seem to be his opposite. This is itself a postmodern gesture, breaking rules of genre and topic to make unlikely but interesting connections. Above all, this book proves that in this time of social division and widespread despair, Emerson can help.

The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Christopher Hanlon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192647091
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 657

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most expansive collection of critical essays on Emerson to date, a survey that approaches Emerson from the vantages of climate change, racial justice, print culture, the digital humanities, the new religious studies, hemispheric American Studies, health humanities, and affect theory among other critical perspectives. Curated between a forward by editor Christopher Hanlon--who makes the case for a capacious and contemporary Emerson--and Cornel West--the activist-scholar whose influential work on Emerson merges with a career of advocacy for economic and racial justice?this collection assesses the history and state of Emerson scholarship while charting pathways for new work on this most essential American writer. Comprised of new works by leading figures in nineteenth-century Americanist literary studies, the volume suggests directions into underexamined facets of Emerson's writing, life, and reputation. From Emerson's engagements with energy infrastructure and the processes of extraction that undergirded the locomotives he rode and the energy economies he sometimes extolled; to the vicissitudes of age he experienced alongside the romantic tropes of youthful vigour he both re-circulated and re-tooled; to Emerson's poetry, both in its philosophical formulations and in its reflections of the material circumstances of nineteenth-century print culture; to Emerson's resonance beyond the United States, elsewhere in the western hemisphere; to the Black press and its refractions of Emersonian transcendentalism in the midst of ante- and post-bellum justice struggles; to the legacies of Emerson to be found in the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, and in the versions of ?Emerson? to be found in children's literature; to his often-fraught and often-fruitful engagements with reform movements of various sorts; to the prospects for digital processes of re-reading Emerson and his contemporaries' styles of textual production and engagement, The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a necessary resource for students, scholars, and general readers committed to the study of Emerson, transcendentalism, and current critical approaches to United States literature.

Emerson's Memory Loss

Emerson's Memory Loss PDF Author: Christopher Hanlon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190842520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
Introduction: Recalling Emerson -- Emerson's memory loss -- Knowing by heart -- Streams of thought -- Coda: Inside information