Ralph Waldo Emerson

BIOGRAPHY:

Ralph Waldo Emerson lived from 1803 to 1882 and was an American essayist, poet and philosopher. He is born in Boston and died in Concord (Massachusetts). He was one of the most important representatives of the transcendental philosophy and in America his great works influenced the American culture and literature.

from: Encarta 2008

The American Scholar

In 1837 Emerson delivered his speech "The American Scholar" in front of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard.
One year earlier his essay "Nature" was published; first it was anonymous and it was not important, but today it is Emerson's most significant work, that describes his transcendental philosophy. He wanted people to feel free.
In "The American Scholar" he transferred his thoughts to cultural and intellectual problems.
Ralph Waldo Emerson says in the speech that men were supposed to be one being and that they are separated into different beings with different jobs and titles. In addition he says that they need to become one being ("man-thinker").
His work advocates "that scholar is educated by nature, books and action.". He uses especially the term "man-thinking" to denote an independent thinker; his mind is engaged by the spectacles of nature. Furthermore the scholar sees his connection to nature and his soul's reflection: to study and contemplate nature is to study contemplate one's soul (as he mentions in his speech). Emerson also mentions books and knowledge, however, in his opinion the true "man-thinker" uses his rich source of information to create ideas relevant and reflective in his day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is often positioned as the “father” of American literature. As a poet, preacher, orator, and essayist, he articulated the new nation’s prospects and needs and became a weighty exemplum of the American artist. Throughout the 19th century, Emerson’s portrait gazed down from schoolhouse and library walls, where he was enshrined as one of America’s great poets. His daughter Ellen, accompanying her father on one of his frequent lecture tours, reported the fun of “seeing all the world burn incense to Father.” His calls for a scholar and a poet who would exploit the untapped materials of the nation served as literary credos for subsequent generations of writers, from Rebecca Harding Davis, Walt Whitman, and Frederick Douglass, to Hart Crane, Robert Frost, and A.R. Ammons.

from:http://college.cengage.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/early_nineteenth/emerson_ra.html

What do I think about the scholar?

It is hard for me to explain it... In my opinion everybody should try the best to learn and to achieve something. Learning from books is very useful if you use them correct - that is what Emerson questions in his speech. Knowledge is something what is developing in your entire life and every minute you improve it in some way.

12/04/09: Today in class we read the third part of the speech and we discussed the most important aspects with our partners.
Gigi and me, we found out these aspects:

- Self-trust
- The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances
- Man Thinking
- in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, --watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts; correcting still his old records;--must relinquish display and immediate fame
- must relinquish display and immediate fame
- accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation
- he is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature.