The Opacity of the Initial: Deciphering the Terms of Agency and Identity in ‘Self-Reliance’ and On Liberty

Abstract

Claims Emerson and Mill share a distinctive preoccupation with conceptions of the “self” and “individuality,” best illustrated in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and the third part of Mill’s On Liberty, where the “self” and “individuality” are submitted as the operative philosophical terms and advanced as the conditions by which the referents of those concepts are realized. Offers explanations for these terms; notes that while both fail to assert a clear account of their terminology, neither appears duplicitous. Suggests instead that Emerson’s “self-reliance” and Mill’s “individuality” are deployed heuristically, as acts of naming – specifically, naming an ideal condition in which the terms are used to create a kind of sentiment that would suffice as a response to the philosophical problem of skepticism. Concludes with an account of how such a response connects with their affirmative naming of the “self” and “individuality,” and their aversion to an explicit definition of these terms.