What Is Ralph Waldo Emerson's View Of Individualism
John Winthrop in A Model of Christian Charity claims that in order to “avoid this shipwreck” all members of the society must work together. He uses a metaphor of a human body: people should knit together as one man, one body. Everything should be done in union: “…rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.” He advocates superiority of community over individual needs and aspirations. The community will succeed only if its members are ready to give up their personal causes understanding primacy of society’s needs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The American Scholar reflects his belief of individualism that surpasses collectivism. In
his lecture he brought Winthrop’s One Man metaphor back but for Emerson society that has a chance to succeed is the one that is the one built out of many members: educated, thinking entities. “The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The American Scholar reflects his belief of individualism that surpasses collectivism. In
his lecture he brought Winthrop’s One Man metaphor back but for Emerson society that has a chance to succeed is the one that is the one built out of many members: educated, thinking entities. “The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”