Ralph Waldo Emerson: Poet Philosopher
             Emerson's upbringing played a substantial role in the formation of his philosophy and thought. The son of a Unitarian minister, Emerson was trained for the pulpit, but he found the church to be far too "confining." Emerson instead chose to proclaim his views on God, the soul, and Nature through his writing.
             Emerson can best be described as a "poet philosopher" rather than a "technical" one. Emerson's philosophy can be viewed as "romantic individualism" or transcendentalism with special emphasis on romantic notions, such as that of the 'individual' (1).
             In "American Scholar" Emerson presents his view of man. Man is not a part of the whole, or even the sum of his parts, but rather man is "all." Emerson frowns on society's development of the individual. Instead of creating originality and genius ("Man Thinking"), society has created a class of "victim[s]" who can only "parrot other men's thinking" (2a).
             For Emerson the most important influence upon the mind was that of "nature," and he felt that the true scholar should be actively engaged in the "spectacle" of the nature around him. The supreme power of nature is the major recurring theme in Emerson (and most transcendental literature). In this philosophical model, Nature is an all-encompassing entity unto itself. Emerson saw Nature as having no beginning and no end; instead it was a "circular power returning into itself" (2b).
             Emerson takes an idealistic and pantheist view. For him God is not simply the Creator of nature, or innate in nature, but rather he held the belief that God and Nature were one. And so, when we know and learn of nature we become almost co-creators with God. In an Emersonian sense, nature is all-powerful, it is the "great and holy teacher" of man (3), yet i...