Abstract
William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson are both committed individualists. However, in what do their individualisms consist and to what degree do they resemble each other? This essay demonstrates that James’s individualism is strikingly similar to Emerson’s. By taking James’s own understanding of Emerson’s philosophy as a touchstone, I argue that both see individualism to consist principally in self-reliance, receptivity, and vocation. Putting these two figures’ understandings of individualism in comparison illuminates under-appreciated aspects of each figure, for example, the political implications of their individualism, the way that their religious individuality is politically engaged, and the importance of exemplarity to the politics and ethics of both of them.
Highlights
William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson are both committed individualists
James’s father read Emerson’s essays out loud to him and the rest of the family, and James himself worked carefully through Emerson’s corpus in the 1870’s and again around 1903, when he gave a speech on Emerson (Carpenter 1939, p. 41; James 1982, p. 241)
Their points of agreement deal with themes that were in the air in nineteenth-century North Atlantic intellectual culture, and it is possible that James arrived at his insights through other sources or that “he discovered them for himself” (Carpenter 1929, p. 458)
Summary
Like Emerson, is committed to the sovereignty of the individual. he characterizes his philosophy as “individualistic” (James 1992, vol 8, pp. 521–22). Like Emerson, subscribes to the crucial importance of self-reliance This means that when it comes to our beliefs, our morality, our politics, and our religion, we should treat ourselves as a locus of authority. James like Emerson regards individuality as involving receptive attention. We see this in James’s essay, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.”. As should be obvious, when James and Emerson tout the term, they have something strikingly similar in mind For both of them, individuality centrally involves a notion of self-reliance, conditioned by our relationality; sensitive appreciation of others and the world around us; and a commitment to one’s own vocation. The similarities extend further, and we can see this when we consider the political and religious implications of the individuality that these figures endorse
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