Ralph Waldo Emerson · Philosophy
Emerson’s central summons - that each person carries a divine spark and must trust it against the pressure of the crowd. Genius, virtue, and originality begin the moment you dare to obey your own mind rather than borrow the world’s.
You learned that Emerson’s self-reliance means trusting the divine spark of intuition within (‘Trust thyself’), that ‘whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,’ and that a slavish ‘foolish consistency’ is the enemy of a living mind. Explain these ideas in your own words.
Leads to Henry David Thoreau.
Begin this lesson →epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.