A Breath of Individualism We here examine Ralph Waldo Emersons self-reliance as a continuation of the Enlightenment tradition.

Any examination of how a set of ideas may fit into this tradition leads us inevitably to the question What is Enlightenment?. We have already examined one such answer by Immanuel Kant in the homonymous essay[1], and, as such, I propose we recapitulate: Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use ones understanding without guidance from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but rather of resolve and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere Aude![1] Two ideas exposed here: that enlightenment requires the release from immaturity, that is, the inability to use ones understanding without guidance from another; and that the immaturity targetted be the one which is self-imposed implying a capacity of the self to get rid of it. Based on this definition does Emersons idea of self-reliance fulfill the criteria for part of Enlightenment thought? Let us start by analyzing the characteristics of self-reliance by examination of the following excerpts from his essay, Self-Reliance[2]: To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.[2] And Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.[2] Emerson begins the essay by expressing how genius is this self-reliance, that is, reliance on ones own thought and universalization of the truth of their content. We merely see here a focus on the self (after all, he commends us: Trust thyself) as a mediator of understanding, but is this understanding meant to be rid of Kants so called Immaturity? To answer this let us focus on another two excerpts from Emersons Essay: Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. () The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.[2]

In this first excerpt we become aware of a new characteristic of Self-reliance: aversion of the conspiracy of society into requesting the virtue of conformity. This seems a first hint at reliance of the self in order to achieve release from Immaturity as defined by Kant. Does it fit? What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.[2] This second citation seems to confirm our suspicion explicitly. It shuns all immaturity, all inability to use ones understanding without guidance from another it appeals to an initial understanding of matters by a scrutinizing of the self, independent from what the people think. We hereby conclude that Emersons Self-reliance fits the Enlightenment tradition as envisioned by Kant. In what aspects did these two thinkers differ in the ways that their ideas fulfilled the criteria for Enlightenment ideas? I will argue now that the fundamental difference is Emersons predilection for Individualism as opposed to the unconditional obedience defended by Kant. On this obedience we find, again from the essay What is Enlightenment: ()argue all you want, and about what you want; but obey![1] This statement comes in the sequence of having discussing the difference between public reason, which Kant says must be free at all times, and private reason I call "private use" that use which a man makes of his reason in a civic post that has been entrusted to him.It is about this latter kind of use of reason that he requests obedience: In some affairs affecting the interest of the community a certain [governmental] mechanism is necessary in which some members of the community remain passive. This creates an artificial unanimity which will serve the fulfillment of public objectives, or at least keep these objectives from being destroyed. Here arguing is not permitted: one must obey.[1] Emerson, in his turn, makes no such distinction in his essay. Nowhere does he request obedience for the good of the public. His only concern is the self, the mediator of self-reliance. At one point of his essay Self-reliance he includes the government, the guider of public objectives as being one of the sources of the want of self -reliance want which he clarifies early in his essay: Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.[2]: And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.[2]

We thus become aware of this fundamental difference between the two thinkers in executing, consciously or subconsciously, the project of Enlightenment. In about 60 years between these two essays, what might have changed that led to such a divergence? It is of such questions that the study of modernism and post-modernism occupies itself. [Myself, I might have some answers to such questions, but alas, for the time being I will end this essay A la Fermat on his Last Theorem*, as it would be the birth of a completely different and lengthy work.]
*A reference to a comment by the mathematician Pierre de Fermat made upon his proposition of the theorem known today as Fermats Last Theorem, whose proof he claimed to be in possession of, albeit it being too lengthy to be contained on the margins of the book Arithmetica by the greek mathematician Diophantus, which inspired the proposition of the said theorem- "It is impossible for a cube to be the sum of two cubes, a fourth power to be the sum of two fourth powers, or in general for any number that is a power greater than the second to be the sum of two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition that this margin is too narrow to contain." A modern proof of this theorem was found only in Century XX by the mathematician Andrew Wiles. This proof is about 500 pages long.

References [1]Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? [2]Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-reliance