Metaphysical Emerson

Abstract

The “Emerson revival” of the last decades has produced extraordinary work offering us an Emerson whose sensitivity to moods, responsiveness to the temptation toward skepticism, alertness to the dynamics of language, and anticipations of literary and philosophical pragmatism make him a vitally relevant presence. At the same time, some of this work has minimized aspects of Emerson’s thought that, to modern readers, can seem vestiges of a bygone philosophical and cultural era – e.g., his invocations of God and the Over-soul, his appeals to the moral sentiment, his apparent faith in progress, and the like.