Emerson Flashcards
Discuss sight in Emerson’s Nature
Distance–the far away; sight the sense that goes out farthest. In his discussion of stars it is important to Emerson that the stars remain inaccessible though instructive. This might easily be a restatement of Kant’s purposiveness without purpose. But in Emerson it is combined with the limits of the spatial landscape or visible sky in a way that suggests vast frontiers. It’s on the fringes of the visually perceptible that Kant’s universal subject is realized. Emerson puts Kant into the sublime American landscape.
Nature gives delight, but “it is certain that the power of produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in …”
“a harmony of both”
What are the four classes enter as parts into “the final cause of the world,” according to Emerson?
Commodity; beauty; language; discipline
What poet does Emerson quote in the second and eighth chapters of Nature?
George Herbert
Does Aeolus appear in Emerson’s Nature?
Yes in the commodity section–man “no longer waits for favoring gales, but by means of steam, he realizes the fable of Aeolus’s bag”
What other writers do you sense in the commodity section of Nature?
Franklin (in his autobiography) and even a foreshadowing of the Andrew Carnegie mindset. The poorest among us are richly blessed. A way in which this negates the suffering of the poor.
Discuss: “The ancient Greeks called the world [cosmos] beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms,, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves.”
Emerson, Nature. The eye’s creative power is to structure primary forms (Kant’s noumena) into perception (phenomena). The “in and for themselves” in pure Kant–the chief ethical implication of his argument.
After discussing Nature as commodity, Emerson moves directly into “A nobler want of man” that is served by Nature. What is this?
The love of beauty
In Nature, Emerson says “A work of art is an abstract or…
epitome of the world.”
In Nature, Emerson says “Thus is Art, a nature passed through the…”
“alembic of man” (a distilling apparatus)
In his chapter on language, Emerson says Nature is the vehicle of thought, and in a simple, double, and threefold degree. What are these three degrees?
- Words are signs of natural facts.
- Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
- Nature is the symbol of spirit.
“1. Words are signs of natural facts.” What does this mean?
Emerson tells us “the use of outer creation is to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.” Uses a sort of Lockean analysis of how all words used to express moral or intellectual facts can be traced back to some material appearance.
Emerson believes every word can be traced back an appearance in nature. But he goes further, stating that every thing in nature symbolizes a spiritual fact. This literal interpretation of a Romantic idea might be attributed to the philosophy of… (then given an example of this principle)
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772); “Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of things?”
