Emerson's Epistemology: The Argument of the Essays

by David Van Leer

Overview

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an important figure in the popular understanding of America has been rediscovered by scholars and critics, yet there has been no critical study of Emerson's relation to traditional nineteenth-century questions about ethics and epistemology. In Emerson's Epistemology David Van Leer turns to this unexplored area of Emerson's philosophy and especially to the problem of his relation to the central intellectual issue of his age - the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. Although Emerson would throughout his life try a number of vocational roles, he considered himself primarily a thinker. He saw his roles as poet and prophet as versions of the more fundamental one of philosopher. Thus an understanding of Emerson's relation to traditional problems about the theory of knowledge clarifies not only the arguments of the specific essays, but the shape of his complex career.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521114318
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/25/2009
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

Preface: Toward an 'Age of Swedenborg'; Acknowledgements; A note on the editions cited; 1. Emerson as philosopher; 2. The structure of nature; 3. The practice of divinity; 4. The revisions of self-reliance; 5. The limits of experience; 6. After epistemology; Notes; Index.