(DOWNLOAD) "Democracy, Aesthetics, Individualism: Emerson As Public Intellectual." by Nineteenth-Century Prose * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Democracy, Aesthetics, Individualism: Emerson As Public Intellectual.
- Author : Nineteenth-Century Prose
- Release Date : January 22, 2003
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 233 KB
Description
The most interesting recent criticisms of Emerson's political activism in the cause of abolition have focused on three linked failures: his elitism and his failure to become an organic representative of the American people; his association of ethics and aesthetics and his failure to find a more truly oppositional position; his commitment to a transcendent lawfulness to which both individuals and communities must submit and his failure to embrace more radical forms of liberation. Each of Emerson's failures--his elitism, his aesthetics, his transcendentalism involves the overarching problem of Emerson's notorious individualism. Yet these criticisms do not address the structural and historical difficulties of mounting a political appeal in a liberal democracy without appealing to individualism and to the individual's judgment, allegiances, actions, and identity. By addressing these difficulties, this essay hopes to move our critical discourse from thinking about Emerson (to attack or defend him) to thinking with Emerson (to use him as a representative figure in developing and clarifying the intellectual's dilemma). This is, of course, an Emersonian distinction with implications for public intellectuals today.
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