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 author of Emerson & Self-Culture shares essays covering such themes as identity, experience, ethics, poetry, philosophy, history, and race. John T. Lysaker works between and weaves together questions and replies in philosophical psychology, Emerson studies, and ethics in this book of deep existential questioning. Each essay in this atypical, philosophical book employs recurring terms, phrases, and questions that characterize our contemporary age. Setting out from the idea of where we are in an almost literal sense, Lysaker takes readers on an intellectual journey into thematic concerns and commitments of broad interest, such as the nature of self and self-experience, ethical life, poetry and philosophy, and history and race. In the manner of Emerson, Cavell, and Rorty, Lysaker’s vibrant writing is certain to have a transformative effect on American philosophy today. “An original and stimulating book, manifesting a level of reflection and existential concern of the highest order. It is intellectually and personally honest.” —Robert E. Innis, author of Susanne Langer in Focus “There is something fresh and hence refreshing in the manner in which John T. Lysaker takes up familiar topics. He shows, with both arresting details and an evolving design, how the conduct of life (to use Emerson’s expression) demands a form of thought frequently at odds with contemporary fashions and preoccupations, with institutionally entrenched approaches and all too rigidly policed discourses.” —Vincent Colapietro, author of Experience, Interpretation, and Community “Acknowledged as one of his generations premier Emerson scholars, Lysaker goes beyond his earlier work, Emerson & Self-Culture . . . [T]he writing is stimulating, vibrant, challenging, risky, and fecund. Recommended.” —D. B. Boersma, Choice

A Study Guide for Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self Reliance / Selected Essays," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream for all of your research needs.

This is the first and only comprehensive selection of lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, his era’s most prominent American man of letters and one of the foremost architects of our intellectual culture. Based on authoritative texts selected and edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson--the most experienced Emerson editors working today--these twenty-five addresses collectively exemplify the lecture style for which Emerson was famed in his day. Best known to his contemporaries as a lecturer, Emerson delivered some 1,500 addresses over the course of his career. Because his most important ideas were worked out in his lectures, they provide the best record we have of his evolving thought--and thus are a key to our understanding of his essays and other printed works. Gathered here are lectures on American culture, literary theory and aesthetics, moral and, as Emerson called it, "intellectual" philosophy, and social and political reform. They are taken from speaking engagements in the United States and the British Isles over the period 1833-1871, during which Emerson often spent four to six months a year on the lecture circuit; lectures from the earliest years of Emerson’s career (1833-1842) have been newly edited for this volume. The volume’s introduction draws on contemporary accounts to describe Emerson’s idiosyncratic but utterly memorable manner of speaking. A headnote provides context to the composition and delivery of each lecture, and footnotes identify Emerson’s allusions to persons, places, occasions, quotations, and books. "By examining his lectures and how they were delivered," say Bosco and Myerson, "we can look into the laboratory of Emerson’s intellectual and compositional process and see his published writings gestating."

Upon its completion, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971–2013) was hailed as a major achievement of scholarship and textual editing. Drawing from the ten volumes of the Collected Works, Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson have gathered some of Emerson’s most memorable prose published during his lifetime and under his direct supervision. The editors have enhanced those selections with additional writings to produce the only anthology that represents in a single volume the full range of Emerson’s written and spoken prose genres—sermons, lectures, addresses, and essays—that took on their public life in the pulpit or lecture hall, or on the printed page. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose demonstrates the remarkable scope of Emerson’s interests, from science, literature, art, philosophy, natural history, and religion to pressing social issues such as slavery and women’s rights, to the character of his contemporaries, including Lincoln and Thoreau. Emerson’s classic essays Nature, “Self-Reliance,” and “Experience” complement his less familiar but no less vital texts, including the deeply heterodox sermon on “The Lord’s Supper,” which effectively announced his resignation from the ministry, and late essays on “American Civilization,” “Character,” and “Works and Days.” Edited according to the most rigorous modern standards, Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose provides an authoritative compendium of writings by one of America’s most significant literary figures and public intellectuals.

This lively volume explores the theme of friendship in the lives and works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Written from diverse perspectives, the essays offer close readings of selected texts and draw on letters and journals to offer a comprehensive view of how Emerson's and Thoreau's friendships took root and bolstered their individual political, social, and ethical projects. This collection explores how Emerson and Thoreau, in their own ways, conceived of friendship as the creation of shared meaning in light of personal differences, tragedy and loss, and changing life circumstances. Emerson and Thoreau presents important reflections on the role of friendship in the lives of individuals and in global culture.

"Effects of Emerson's professional guidance as mentor, marketer, editor, and promoter for 8 young writers: Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Christopher Cranch, Samuel Gray Ward, Jones Very, Ellery Channing, Charles Newcomb, and Ellen Sturgis Hooper"--

At the core of Emerson’s philosophy is his view as a naturalist that we are “made of the same atoms as the world is.” In counterpoint to this identity, he noted the fluid evolution and diversity of combinations and configurations of those atoms. Thus, he argued, our “relation and connection” to the world are not occasional or recreational, but “everywhere and always,” and also reciprocal, ongoing, and creative. He declared he would be a naturalist, which for him meant being a knowledgeable “lover of nature.” Emerson’s famous insistence on an “original relation to the universe” centered on morally creative engagement with the environment. It took the form of a nature literacy that has become central to contemporary environmental ethics. The essential argument of this book is that Emerson’s integrated philosophy of nature, ethics, and creativity is a powerful prototype for a diverse range of contemporary environmental ethics. After describing Emerson’s own environmental literacy and ethical, aesthetic, and creative practices of relating to the natural world, Dunston delineates a web of environmental ethics that connects Emerson to contemporary eco-feminism, living systems theory, Native American science, Asian philosophy, and environmental activism.

Volume 2 includes a detailed chronology of the events in Emerson's life during the months between July 1829 and October 1830. Explanatory footnotes, textual endnotes, and a comprehensive index further add to this significant contribution to our understanding of one of America's foremost thinkers.