Emerson and Self-Reliance

By (author) George Kateb

Not available to order

Publication date:

09 April 2002

Length of book:

272 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-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....