SELF-RELIANCE

Lecture notes

SELF-RELIANCE

                                    By Emerson

The first line of the verse quoted from Beaumont and Fletcher by Emerson -  ‘cost the bantling on the rocks’ - sums up the entire essay  Self-Reliance. 

This is a description of  'individualism', where the human being is thrown into challenging situation to master it.  If a child is thrown on the rocks in the wilderness,  it learns to tackle the challenge thrown by the wilderness.  Too much of security reduces a man’s abilities.  Trails, tribulations, suffering, pain, problems and challenges are opportunities that help humanity to sharpen their capabilities.  The individual survives pitted against the hardships of life.  

Emerson’s presentation of the human species takes its origin from German Romanticism.  Immanuel Kant in his treatise called ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ discusses the power of individual.  

Transcendentalists believed in individualism.  They believed in the ‘priori’ that Kant was talking about.  Wordsworth wrote in his ‘Immortality Ode’ that the ‘Child is the father of Man’. ‘Priori’ assumes that each child is born with innate intelligence.  Therefore, even if a child is thrown on the rocks, still it would survive.  

'Self-Reliance'  talks about the inborn intelligence of the human species that can overcome any difficult situation.

Moses, Plato and Milton were original thinkers

     Individualism emphasizes on original thinking. 

Emerson wrote a lot about this concept called ‘Man Thinking’.  We have to believe our thoughts.  The thoughts in our ‘private heart’ are the same thought in a genius.  Therefore, when we express ourselves we are actually expressing the ‘universal sense’.  Moses, Plato and Milton have seen their ‘gleam of light’ of knowledge. The greatest ‘bards and sages’ of this universe have been directly in contact with life.  They have learnt from life.  The knowledge they have written about is the culmination of their understanding of life.  

In every work of genius we recognize our thoughts.  In fact, a work can become great only if it expresses universal truths. The reader has to identify himself with the book.  The reader’s thought and the writer’s thoughts must be similar.  Just as in ‘American Scholar’, Emerson defines the role of the writer here.  That is a writer has to be extremely original under all circumstances.