Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In his seminal Self-Reliance, Emerson tackles issues he believes exist in society and addresses ways of life that he believes are correct. The essay frames Emerson’s ideal of self-reliance, which he defines as trusting your own values in defiance of social influence or opposition and as vital to transcendentalist ethics. This ideal is elaborated in terms of non-conformity, avoiding false consistency, and following your own “divine” instinct. Though philosophically attractive, Emerson’s ideal seems oddly indifferent to the harsh, socially disrupting material conditions of industrializing New England. Nineteenth-century industrialization decimated older traditions of agricultural work and rural life, driving desperate workers to cities in search of work that was often low-paying, dangerous, and socially alienating. In this way, Emerson appears to posit an abstract notion of self-reliance at precisely the moment when, for a great many of his contemporaries, material conditions came precisely to prohibit this self-reliance. Those who failed to conform to the new realities of urban, industrial life would simply be left behind. Emerson repeatedly enjoins his readers to take what they are given and make the best of it: “Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.” The deeply socially regressive implications of this injunction, particularly in light of its material context, has often been overlooked in the extensive commentary on this dense and somewhat elliptical essay. This study considers Emerson’s ideal of self-reliance in a material context in which this practice was all but excluded.