Existing comment:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882:
In 1832, Harvard-educated minister Ralph Waldo Emerson resigned his post at Boston's Second Congregational Church in a crisis of faith. Having cast off doctrine, Emerson went on in his voluminous writings to create a uniquely American school of philosophy, which harkened back to Thomas Paine's revolutionary politics of "Common Sense" and anticipated William James's pragmatism. In Emerson's system, man approached God (embodied in nature) on his own, taking responsibility for his own salvation. Emerson preached self-reliance as Americans' core attribute; this empowered the individual in a way that led to dreams of perfectionism and supported the culture of American business.
Daniel Chester French, 1901 |