Abstract
A recurrent theme in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings is his struggles with the problem of scholarly inaction. Commentators have given much attention to “The American Scholar” but less to his remarks about the “pale scholar.” In this chapter, I focus on the latter and argue that understanding the evolving nature of Emerson’s views about what counts for action could not only deepen our understanding of his philosophy and its orientation toward the conduct of life but also explain why, according to Emerson, there seems to be no reconciliation between “the theory and practice of life.”
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Blau 2013: 488. According to Kenneth Sacks, some of the earliest biographers of Emerson such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and James Elliot Cabot, with their “socially conservative” views, were instrumental in cementing the image of Emerson as a thinker “distant from abolition” (Sacks 2008: xxvi). For evolving nature of Emerson’s commitment to the cause of abolition, see, among others, Rowe (1997).
- 2.
I use the words “scholar” and “philosopher” interchangeably by which I mean a person who is in the grip of questions such as “What is the character of this universe in which we dwell?” (James [1902] 2013: 35).
- 3.
Translating theoria as “contemplation” is a familiar translation but some commentators are wary of its connotations. In general, many commentators find Book X of Nicomachean Ethics at odds with the rest of the book. For a fresh discussion of the meanings of “theoretical activity” or theorein in Aristotle’s corpus, see Roochnik (2009). As far as this research is concerned, it seems to me that whether we take theorein to mean the activity of thinking, or contemplating “eternal laws” or “study” or a natural capacity of human beings to observe and to be curious, the fact remains that for Aristotle happiness or eudaimonia “is thought to depend on leisure” and the life of theorein, as the most flourishing or the happiest life, requires such leisure (NE 1177b4). In “The American Scholar,” Emerson seems to be saying that scholarly life or pursuit of truth is not totally dependent on leisure.
- 4.
Cf. Cavell 2003: 36.
- 5.
See, especially, Chapter VII and VIII. Tolstoy writes, for example, “They dug out the iron, taught us how to cut the timber, tamed the cattle and the horses, showed us how to sow crops and live together; they brought order to our lives; they taught me how to think and to speak. […] and now I have proved to them that it is all meaningless! ‘Something is wrong here,’ I said to myself” (1982 [1882]: 54).
- 6.
See, for example, the following passage from the chapter, “Higher Laws”: “I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do” (Thoreau 1989: 210).
- 7.
Kathryn Shultz (2015), for example, goes so far as to call Walden a semi-fictional, myopic work that is oblivious to the requirements of living with other people, and wonders why people are still cherishing it. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine Schultz’s claims, some of which indistinguishable from ad hominem attacks, but I suggest that we can still benefit from Walden without validating some of his questionable remarks. There are many factors that have turned Walden into a significant work and its impatient disregard for others is not one of them.
- 8.
As he writes, “I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house […] The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it” (26). There is an undeniably conceited tone in Walden , but I don’t think it was intended. Polemic expressions is part of what makes Walden an intense book (an intensely beautiful book). Besides, one could always read Walden with the same attitude that Augustine wished people read his autobiography, that is, to read it with “charity” (Augustine [384] 1966 Book X: § 3).
- 9.
For a fresh discussion of the current literature on the importance of “attention” in Murdoch’s moral thought, see Cordner (2016).
- 10.
Cf. Laugier 2015.
- 11.
Cf. Goodman 1990: 35.
- 12.
As Emerson writes to Margaret Fuller, “At the name of a society, all my repulsions play, all my quills rise and sharpen”; quoted from (Smith 1962: 63).
- 13.
For example, he writes in his journal, “I waked at night, and bemoaned myself, because I had not thrown myself into this deplorable question of slavery, which seems to want nothing so much as a few assured voices. But then, in hours of sanity, I recover myself, and say, God must govern His own world, and knows His way out of this pit, without my desertion of my post which has none to guard it but me” (JMN, 7: 190). Kateb argues that in principle, self-reliance as the core of Emerson’s philosophy is incompatible with political engagements. However, the evil of slavery made Emerson “change his attitude on the subject of associating for reform” (Kateb 2002: 177).
- 14.
“Words in common use long ago,” writes Aurelius, “are obsolete now. So too the names of those once famed are in a sense obsolete. […] All things fade and quickly turn to myth: quickly too utter oblivion drowns them. And I’m talking of those who shone with some wonderful brilliance: the rest […] are immediately ‘beyond sight, beyond knowledge.’ But what in any case is everlasting memory? Utter emptiness” (Aurelius 2006, Book V, § 33).
- 15.
There is an analogy between the notion of “truce between knowledge and action” and the stoic notion of a skill of life (téchnê perì tòn bíon). For more on this, see Sellars (2009), especially Chap. 3; cf. Emerson’s sobering voice in the middle of “Experience,” “We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them” (EL, 478).
- 16.
To which I will attend in more detail in Chap. 6.
- 17.
I wonder if Cavell was thinking of the same thing when he wanted to find out what makes philosophy “painful” (Cavell 2003: 192).
- 18.
It is noteworthy that she takes the key questions in both The Fragility of Goodness and The Therapy of Desire to be questions about the very idea of doing philosophy in the face of a world where suffering is randomly distributed. “[W]hat business,” she writes, “does anyone have living in the happy and self-expressive world [of philosophy], so long as the other world exists and one is a part of it?” (1994: 3). Emerson, in a sense, was “using philosophy against the hurts of life” (JMN, V: 148).
- 19.
Quoted from Dunn Mascetti 2001:34.
- 20.
Bernard Williams doesn’t think so. See Williams (1973).
- 21.
As argued in Peter Singer’s book, How Are We to Live?
- 22.
For example, in the last two pages of “Montaigne.”
- 23.
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Hosseini, R. (2021). The “Pale Scholar”. In: Emerson's Literary Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54979-4_4
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