Book description
From before the Civil War until his death in 1882, Ralph Waldo
Emerson was renowned -- and renounced -- as one of the United States'
most prominent abolitionists and as a leading visionary of the
nation's liberal democratic future. Following his death, however, both
Emerson's political activism and his political thought faded from
public memory, replaced by the myth of the genteel man of letters and
the detached sage of individualism. In the 1990s, scholars
rediscovered Emerson's antislavery writings and began reviving his
legacy as a political activist. A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo
Emerson is the first collection to evaluate Emerson's political
thought in light of his recently rediscovered political activism. What
were Emerson's politics? A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson
authoritatively answers this question with seminal essays by some of
the most prominent thinkers ever to write about Emerson -- Stanley
Cavell, George Kateb, Judith N. Shklar, and Wilson Carey McWilliams --
as well as many of today's leading Emerson scholars. With an
introduction that effectively destroys the "pernicious myth about
Emerson's apolitical individualism" by editors Alan M. Levine and
Daniel S. Malachuk, A Political Companion to Emerson reassesses
Emerson's famous theory of self-reliance in light of his antislavery
politics, demonstrates the importance of transcendentalism to his
politics, and explores the enduring significance of his thought for
liberal democracy. Including a substantial bibliography of work on
Emerson's politics over the last century, A Political Companion to
Ralph Waldo Emerson is an indispensable resource for students of
Emerson, American literature, and American political thought, as well
as for those who wrestle with the fundamental challenges of democracy
and liberalism.
""Makes a compelling case for reassessing Emerson's
political thought."--Colloquy" --
Alan M. Levine, associate professor of political theory at
American University, is the author of Sensual Philosophy: Toleration,
Skepticism, and Montaigne's Politics of the Self. He lives in
Washington, D. C.
Daniel S. Malachuk, associate professor of English at Western
Illinois University, is the author of Perfection, the State, and
Victorian Liberalism. He lives in Bettendorf, Iowa.
