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Overview
During much of his life in the early 1800s, Ralph Waldo Emerson was considered as a radical thinker. His opposition to established religious opinion and to slavery was scandalous. It was Emerson's deep commitment to individualism that is at the root of his disdain. His articulation of individualism is constant, whether aimed against the group mind or institutional constrictions. Kateb has written this book to bring Emerson into our conception of modernity. Kateb gives a reading of Emerson which is friendly to the interests of Nietzsche and to later Nietzscheans including Weber, Heidegger, Arendt and Foucault.
Editorials
Booknews
This reprint is distinguished by a new preface reconsidering Emerson's , a work that goes undiscussed in the text proper (Kateb moves toward the notion that Emerson's divinization of humanity renders the balance with nature lost, "its mute appeal denied"). Nonetheless, Kateb (politics, Princeton U.) views Emerson as a radical for his commitment to individualism as an ideal suitable for democracy. Emerson calls it "self-reliance" and Kateb distinguishes between the mental and active kinds, suggesting Emerson elevates intellectual independence above independence of character and practical achievement. Nietzsche is held up as Emerson's best reader, Kateb aspiring to a reading of Emerson friendly to Nietzsche's interests. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Esq: Journal Of American Renaissance
In this original treatment, which offers new insightson one of Emerson's central ideas as well as on his political theory,Kateb portrays an Emerson who is indispensable for thinking about America, as important as Jefferson and Lincoln.— Eric Wilson
American Literature
There is no recent study that so convincingly shows that Emerson anticipates (and rivals) Nietzsche as a sustained practitioner of multiple perspectivism and that Emersonian self-reliance is therefore 'not one particular substantive or doctrinal principle like other ones.' In this and other ways, Kateb has deepened, and usefully complicated, our understanding of Emerson.— Richard F. Teichgraber, III
College English
By emphasizing mental self-reliance Kateb reasserts Emerson the Transcendentalist and makes a compelling case for the political importance of this dimension of Emerson's thought. . . . For [Kateb] Emerson's construction of self-reliance serves as a vital, but problematic, model that political philosophers can situate as both the foundation and the consummation of a theory of democratic civil society.— T. Gregory Garver
Critical Inquiry
An important contribution. . . . Kateb] has an excellent discussion of how antagonism and contrast lie at the heart of Emerson's notion of identity.— Sharon Cameron
ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance
In this original treatment, which offers new insightson one of Emerson's central ideas as well as on his political theory,Kateb portrays an Emerson who is indispensable for thinking about America, as important as Jefferson and Lincoln.— Eric Wilson