Revisiting Emerson’s “Self- Reliance”
To readers of inspirational literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) needs no introduction. The leading American intellectual of his day Emerson was a prolific writer and lecturer, expounding upon the tenants of Transcendentalism, that quintessentially American philosophy which inspired the later New Thought and self — help movements (the term “self — help” having first appeared in Emerson’s 1841 essay “Compensation”). Originally trained for a career in the ministry Emerson came to reject the moribund Yankee Christianity of his day, developing his own eclectic belief system gleaned from his intuitive perceptions regarding man’s relationship to Nature and God.
To Emerson the latter — far from the anthropomorphic “angry God” found in the sermons of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and other colonial revivalists — was instead an all pervasive “Over — Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart.” One can hear the echoes of Paul’s words from his Epistle to the Ephesians in Emerson’s thought: “One God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all.” (Ephesians 4:6–7, NLT) This innate perception was reinforced by Emerson’s broad study of world religions and philosophies, including Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita as well as luminaries of Western thought such as Plato, Plotinus, and Plutarch. Though…
