Re: NP -The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’

[Ian Livingston]

Oh, but Emerson was merely the American spokesman for Rousseau. His
ideas of individualism were neither new nor original. Of course,
neither were Rousseau's, though they looked radical to the aristocracy
of the time. I think if you want to aver roots, you'll have to go back
to the First Empire in Egypt at least, maybe further.

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 6:36 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/riff-ralph-waldo-emerson.html?_r=1
>
> The excessive love of individual liberty that debases our national
> politics? It found its original poet in Ralph Waldo. The plague of
> devices that keep us staring into the shallow puddle of our dopamine
> reactions, caressing our touch screens for another fix of our own
> importance? That’s right: it all started with Emerson’s
> “Self-Reliance.” Our fetish for the authentically homespun and the
> American affliction of ignoring volumes of evidence in favor of the
> flashes that meet the eye, the hunches that seize the gut? It’s
> Emerson again, skulking through Harvard Yard in his cravat and greasy
> undertaker’s waistcoat, while in his mind he’s trailing silken robes
> fit for Zoroaster and levitating on the grass.



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant