Emerson and Self-Reliance
By (author) George Kateb
Not available to order
Publication date:
09 April 2002Length of book:
272 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9780742578081
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a great moral philosopher. One of his principle contributions is the theory of self-reliance, a view of democratic individuality. During much of his life, Emerson was considered a radical thinker, and his opposition to established religious opinion was scandalous. Emerson's deep commitment to individualism was at the root of his critique, and his articulation of individualism was constant, whether aimed against the group mind or against institutional constrictions. 'Nietzsche was Emerson's best reader,' and George Kateb provides an accessible reading of Emerson that is friendly to the interests of Nietzsche and to later Nietzscheans such as Weber, Heidegger, Arendt, and Foucault.
By emphasizing mental self-reliance Kateb reasserts Emerson the Transcendentalist and makes a compelling case for the political importance of this dimension of Emerson's thought. . . . For [Kateb] Emerson's construction of self-reliance serves as a vital,but problematic, model that political philosophers can situate as both the foundation and the consummation of a theory of democratic civil society....