Abstract
What would happen to the reception of Emerson if one does not share his religious sentiments? I argue that appreciating Emerson is not hinged upon sharing a similar attitude toward religion not because we can discern a secular sense of wonder in his writings, as George Kateb claims, but also because his literary excellence shows us ways of wonder in the first place. Further, I show that though there is a brief exchange of similar ideas between Emerson and Thomas Nagel in the latter’s engagement of “the religious temperament,” their responses to what they call the tremendousness of existence is fundamentally different.
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Notes
- 1.
For an elaborate discussion of family resemblances between various concepts of wonder, see Vasalou (2015).
- 2.
For more on various conceptions of wonder in the history of philosophy, see Rubenstein (2008).
- 3.
“The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory…” (EL, 414).
- 4.
- 5.
For a fresh argument about meaning-conferring dimensions of wonder, see Schinkel (2019).
- 6.
For more on Cavell’s approach to the transcendental aspect of the ordinary in the works of Emerson and Thoreau, see Laugier (2009).
- 7.
It is beyond the scope of this study to examine Gray’s claims, but it is noteworthy that even if many forms of atheism, from transhumanism to scientism and secular humanism, share certain resemblances with Christianity; it is not clear that we can arrive at the conclusion that, therefore, religion is an inevitable human experience.
- 8.
- 9.
In this chapter, I’m not discussing wonder in its “inquisitive sense,” one that Richard Dawkins has in mind in his An Appetite for Wonder (2013). Dawkins argues that it is not religion but “real science” that should be feeding our awe-inspiring experiences of the world. For a critical discussion of Dawkins’ views about the cause, function, and the cognitive value of wonder, see Fuller (2006); especially Chap. 4.
- 10.
In fact, a growing number of scholars have expressed their concerns about reading too much into Emerson’s unpublished works and invite Emersonians to “resist the temptation to over-emphasize” Emerson’s journals and letters and focus instead on his published essays (Porte 2004: 49); see also Van Leer (1986: xiv).
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Hosseini, R. (2021). Religious Gestures and Secular Strengths. In: Emerson's Literary Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54979-4_5
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