Transcendentalist

Transcendentalist
By R. W. Emerson

I purchased a book titled The selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson in a used book store in Petoskey this past Friday; original copyright 1940. A good find at four dollars while waiting for the sailing weather to arrive. I happened to read this essay while on Janet’s shift at the wheel on the way back down state yesterday. The following is what I got from a great thinker.

There are two views; the materialist and the idealist. With the materialist ones’ foundation is set in observable events, rationalized as fact. An idealist begins with thought. I am reminded of The Moody Blues, Threshold of a Dream;(run the music in your head while you complete this read.)"I am therefore I am." Is A actually A? Or does I come before A? In my view Emerson’s essay on the subject addresses this debate. "I is thought which is called I, is the mold into which the world is poured like melted wax. It is called the power of circumstance. Of which the transcendentalist has command." The philosophers test lay in the interpretation. This said might suggest a conundrum in thought where the social experiment has yet to bare out formidable fact.

Emerson comes down on the side of Idealism I’ve been told, but from a point of view that surprised me. After reading his essay for the first time, as opposed to hearing it second hand, I come away feeling an author was simply describing the people and their philosophy. Like Whitman, “it is what it is” seemed to be a prevalent theme. Early in his essay he throws out the challenge to the ''capitalist'' whom he accuses of an orderly mind, ''But ask him why he believes that an uniform experience will continue uniform, or on what grounds he founds his faith in his figures. Emerson claims the answer '' he will perceive that his mental fabric is built up on just as strange and quaking foundations as that of stone “{fact}.
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Emerson contends that an Idealist observes things with a metaphysical measure, ranking things in order of importance. An Idealist is an independent man capable of his own mind, yet Emerson concedes the eventual constraint of social conformity. Further, in a word Emerson cynically associates intuitive thought of all types, rationale or irresponsible, as transcendental. Depending on the degree of irresponsible thought and what one actually does with the thought is a subject of lengthy discussion in his essay. They are lovers of nature also, and “find an indemnity in the inviolable order of the world for the violator; order and grace of man.” In my 2004 translation, they can blame all their indiscretions to nature.

In the end I came away from the essay with a more realistic view of the Transcendentalist, and not quite convinced of any endorsement from Emerson. He is less than complementary to the subject people, as he leaves you with the impression of a pragmatic analysis of a philosophy of a people of the time. He does describe an evolutionary “thought process”, an oxymoron to logic or reason in my opinion, where dots do not necessarily have to connect and people can digress to irresponsible actions; which leaves them in surrender to the State. The essay helped color further the answers to my question of the year; which is how a person could loose sight of personal accountability.

There may be those who may come away from the essay with a totally different intrepretation than myself. This may be proof on Emerson.