"Self-Reliance" is a very important element in Emerson's overall philosophy. It is one of the essays outlining Emerson's views of the individual and how the individual relates to other large number
Whitman's poetry took these biblical forms because he conceived of his poetic role evangelically. In his analysis of the national crisis, the superior threat to the union was the failure of democracy on a personal level. Individuals did not believe in their admit worth, he felt, but deferred to others of superior wealth, education, and status. Whitman's self-assumed task was to reeducate individuals away from either subservientness to others or mastery over them (Levine 147).
At the same time, Emerson saw a conflict inherent in the transactionhip amidst the individual and society. The individual always seeks to assert hi or herself, and Emerson says that to be a man is to be a nonconformist.
This is also necessary for the individual to tap into the Oversoul and to listen then to his own heart. Society, however, tries to force conformity:
Harris, Kenneth Marc. "Emersonian Self-Reliance and Self-Deception Theory." Philosophy and literary works (October 1991), 286-294.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the topographic point the divine providence has found for you, the society of our contemporaries, the connection of events. heavy(p) men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the mental capacity of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being (1046).
Self-reliance and so means a constant reinvention of the world even if that reinvention is establish on a revelation rather than a completely new discovery. We can accomplish this task ourselves, without the need of anyone else to expire us or to show us the way: "The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so sharp that it is profane to seek to interpose helps" (1053). All truth is in fact a single truth, and so Emerson is not in truth rejecting all other ideas or the authority of church or state. He is rather showing that the truth that has been discovered by others can
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