ITT based 19th century writers

[Anonymous No.12886602]

His ideas seem to be so universal and obvious but our society is quick to forget them

[Anonymous No.12886695]

>>12886602
Where do you start with Emerson?

[Anonymous No.12886754]

>>12886695

Not OP. I found a collection of his essays at Goodwill for cheap when I was coming back around to reading. My favorites at the time were Self-Reliance and Nature. Based on what I've read about him, Nature seems like a good way to start, especially if you're concerned about understanding his Transcendentalist philosophy. But Self-Reliance is still a favorite.

A couple years on, my view of him has matured somewhat, but I still like him. I find his writing to be beautiful and I think his desire to empower the individual is noble, but I think that his critics are correct to point out that his whole absolute self-trust schtick goes too far. Melville's Captain Ahab was apparently, in part, a response to Emerson: a man who takes being animated by his own goals without heed to others to the point of self-destruction. Even in my rose-tinted initial phase with Emerson, I thought that his essay "Friendship" was unreasonably inhuman re: close relationships (he was jaded by the early death of his wife). Actually, I'm reading Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" right now and this is making my think of Bazarov.

Still, blah blah lbah, Emerson is a must read; even if he might make the arrogant too secure, he's good medicine for a self-doubter. Some favorite bits:

>"We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands. We must have an antagonism in the tough world for all the variety of our spiritual faculties or they will not be born. Manual labor is the study of the external world. The advantage of riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir."
Man the Reformer

>"The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen."
Politics

>"Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world… Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle."
Self-Reliance

[Anonymous No.12886782]

>>12886754
All of the Trancendentalists were great honestly. I feel as though they were lightyears ahead of their time and are really relevant now considering how out of touch with nature most of the world is now.

If you think Emerson is a little bit too self-centred (he kind of is tbqh despite how inspiring he can be), then I suggest you read Margaret Fuller. She criticises this aspect of Emerson before going on to take Transcendentalism in a more egalitarian direction.

[Anonymous No.12886793]

>>12886754
Thank you for your detailed response.

[Anonymous No.12886825]

>>12886782

I will! Having expanded my knowledge base since initially encountering Emerson, I just see a kind of "every man CAN be an island unto himself" strain that runs contrary to human nature. Granted, he did not have a modern understanding of psychology or neurology, so it's not like that shortcoming is due to neglect on his part. But there is a social current in the individual human that he overlooks.

Also, the redeeming philosophy that enlightens an intelligent man (who may, in fact, be able to exist more or less as an island) isn't going to be as much use to the average person. And a prosperous society ideally needs avenues for all its members to self-actualize (there's a whole conversation here about contemporary culture and how that is NOT the case).

[Anonymous No.12886835]

"The German Fatherland" (1813)


Which is the German’s fatherland?
Is’t Prussia’s or Swabia’s land?
Is’t where the Rhine’s rich vintage streams?
Or where the Northern sea-gull screams?—
Ah, no, no, no!
His fatherland’s not bounded so!
Which is the German’s fatherland?
Bavaria’s or Styria’s land?
Is’t where the Marsian ox unbends?
Or where the Marksman iron rends?—
Ah, no, no, no!
His fatherland’s not bounded so.

Which is the German’s fatherland?
Pomerania’s, or Westphalia’s land?
Is it where sweep the Dunian waves?
Or where the thundering Danube raves?—
Ah, no, no, no!
His fatherland’s not bounded so!

Which is the German’s fatherland?
O, tell me now the famous land!
Is’t Tyrol, or the land of Tell?
Such lands and people please me well.—
Ah, no, no, no!
His fatherland’s not bounded so!

Which is the German’s fatherland?
Come, tell me now the famous land.
Doubtless, it is the Austrian state,
In honors and in triumphs great.—
Ah, no, no, no!
His fatherland’s not bounded so!

Which is the German’s fatherland?
So tell me now the famous land!
Is’t what the Princes won by sleight
From the Emperor’s and Empire’s right?—
Ah, no, no, no!
His fatherland’s not bounded so!

Which is the German’s fatherland?
So tell me now at last the land!—
As far’s the Germans accent rings
And hymns to God in heaven sings,—
That is the land,—
There, brother, is thy fatherland!

There is the German’s fatherland,
Where oaths attest the grasped hand,—
Where truth beams from the sparkling eyes,
And in the heart love warmly lies;—
That is the land,—
There, brother, is thy fatherland!

That is the German’s fatherland,
Where wrath pursues the foreign band,—
Where every Frank is held a foe,
And Germans all as brothers glow;—
That is the Land,—
All Germany’s thy fatherland!

[Anonymous No.12887516]

>>12886825
On that note, isn’t there a chapter in Moby Dick that references the idea of men being islands? Moby Dick
itself seems to grand attack of the self-centred nature of Emerson while still supporting the core ideas of Transcendentalism.

Ultimately though, I feel that the reason Emerson and his contemporaries like Walden and Fuller are so relevant today is that we’ve become spiritually dead. We’ve lost all fascination with nature and it’s wonders. Speaking as someone who lives close to nature, I find it to be an endless source of wonder and generally life-affirming. That’s something our cosmopolitan cities with castles in the air could never do.

It’s part of why Moby Dick speaks to me so strongly. Society and it’s artificial constrains (hierarchies, wealth, prejudice and so on) all crumble before the indifferent power of nature, with the white whale as it’s elusive god.

[Anonymous No.12888091]

>>12887516

My literal brother. I agree entirely regarding people being too removed from Nature. We're operating with 100,000 year old neurological machinery and we've been divorced in the span of a couple generations from agrarian life, and in the span of less than two decades we've plugged into the digital world.

I'll post more laterr watching a movie

[Anonymous No.12888236]

>>12888091
Exactly. I'm not enough of a Luddite to deny the benefits modern technology has brought (some technology even helps preserve ecosystems), but it's soulless cosmopolitanism and the destruction of natural scenery that speaks to the romantic soul that's really instils a feeling of alienation and lifelessness. In most cities, I would just keep my head down and try to get out of there ASAP unless there was something I was specifically going there for, but earlier today, for example I just spent several hours aimlessly wandering around this beautiful coastal town far cut off from the rest of the world and I was having the time of my life.

Still, I feel that nature is something that must be shared and enjoyed by all of humanity if it is to heal social wounds, and this is why I think Margaret Fuller's writings trump Emerson's. In her writing Fuller argues not only for the connection to the spiritual and natural in order to develop empathy and a belief in equality for all people regardless of race and gender. Writing mainly about the social oppression of women and negroes, she uses them as examples of people whom compassion and civil liberties must be developed for in order to ensure that humanity can be united as God and nature intended it.

I think Melville's take on the philosophy is more in line with Fuller's too. Think of how Queequeg and Tashego no longer suffer prejudice once they're out at sea away from civilisation. Similarly, think of how the women are the ones who stock the provisions for the Pequod and basically give the ship everything it needs for a safe journey, only for the voyage to be doomed by the selfish ambitions of Ahab--A man who abandoned his wife, child and all notions of love to persue an industrious career. It's a scathing attack on society when you think about it.

[Anonymous No.12888560]

>>12888236

I still maintain I will come back and write.more.subastatibe respones when I'm not srinking. Keep this thrsad alive.

[Anonymous No.12889061]

>>12888236
(Excuse my disconnectedness, it's 2 AM and I need to go to sleep)

>soulless cosmopolitanism

I don't think I have this post saved, and the anon that made it probably doesn't realize how impactful a statement it was, but I saw a /lit/izen use the term "Californization" to encapsulate the gradual metamorphosis of American cities into homogenized copies of one another. It bears out my own experience in travel, limited as they may be; the middle sized cities all begin to resemble San Francisco.

My favorite vacations have been to places that still feel "like themselves"; which is to say, those places that have maintained some feeling of local and unique culture (ex. the Pigeon Forge area and its bluegrass culture, the Maine sea coast north of the touristy areas that is still ingrained in tall ship culture). Boston also maintains a bit of its uniqueness, although there are plenty of "comedy" routines and mainstream attacks on that city as a bastion of "racism" and backwardsness.

>>12887516

>spiritually dead

>lost all fascination with nature and [its] wonders

I live in Burlington, VT, which has been heavily Californized. I can only think of day hikers that go to the easiest, most touristy locations to "hike" for 45 minutes in order to take selfies at the top of Mt. Philo with their dogs. At this point, the appreciation of Nature for many people (esp. in the lower middle class, the Millennial Vampires coasting off their parents waning affluence) goes only so far as it provides a backdrop to be included in their crafted social media narrative. I also find it blackly amusing - and at times extremely frustrating - how these are the same people who use a term like "cultural appropriation" unironically with zero self-awareness of the fact that, later on in the day, they're going to a yoga class and co-opting Sanskrit mysticism.

[Anonymous No.12889065]

>>12886602

Thomas Carlyle.

[Anti-/lit/ !N4bnZoKwfU No.12889082]

Emmerson is anything but obvious. I couldnt figure out Nature to save my life.

[Anonymous No.12889887]

>>12889061
>places that still "feel like themselves"
I agree with this. The notion of the multiculturalism and the melting pot seems so hypocritical in that sense. I'm totally tolerant of other cultures and people, but I like these cultures to be distinct, otherwise they have no identity at all. The modern world likes to sell these pieces of culture in bite-sized chunks-- things that are "styled" after certain parts of a culture, but don't really belong to that culture. I don't live in the U.S. and I suppose I'm lucky in the sense that many of the cities near me still have buildings and streets that are centuries old and still in use. Still, I have seen more modern cities, and there's just no identity in them whatsoever. In more rural and natural areas, however many places still preserve their own regional identities and there seems to be an appreciation for the natural landmarks that are there.

I'm willing to bet that all the bitterness people feel towards the world would disapate if they learned to appreciate the beauty in the smallest miracles of nature. I thought I was alone in this thinking until I read the Trancendentalists.

[Anonymous No.12889976]

>>12888236
THE LADY VANISHES
it's funny how many of the current dilemmas of american culture, things we are used to thinking of as 'new', actually hark back to the 19th century,fourierists disembark in New England to build their phalanstere, oneida glassware, Karl Marx' column on the New York Herald tribune, the transcendentalists, the anarchists, the progressive subculture of the early 20th century: feminists, socialists, eugenists, Mr. John Dewey, himself. immigrants from the eastern ghettoes eroding the sound racial basis of anglo saxon society. the consumer dreamlands of Wannamaker and co.(Frank L. Baum, the wizard of Oz, set up commodity displays on department stores) on the other hand, forgotten populist movement, arts and crafts, William Morris' workshop socialism. Telegraph wires and railroads summon forth the phantasmic power of Cybernation 1.0. Muckracking journalists, massacres of striking workers, edisonades and cinematographs. the good is entangled with the bad and it takes effort to untangle them. Cristopher Lasch quotes the transcendetalists on ocassion, contrasting their expansive sense of self with the minimal self of the 70s, our forerunner.

[Anonymous No.12890054]

>>12889887

I'm probably going to use the term "degeneracy" in this post, but I want to clarify beforehand that what I refer to won't be the "moral degeneration" away from traditionalist norms (although that is obviously a force) but the statistically verifiable "psychological degeneration" we can observe on the individual level - rising rates of depression, suicide, mental health disorders, dissolution of the nuclear family and the increased rates of abuse in single parent households, etc.

I am hard-pressed to find a reason that an immigrant would want to assimilate into Western culture in the current paradigm. There are few unifying principles within the collective that help the individual citizen to maintain a stable and self-actualizing identity (and people who actively work against what decent institutions remain). As related to the single person of Transcendentalism, there's an assumption of the right to absolute self-trust without any of the acts or reflections that might allow that self-trust to achieve a positive end. There is faith in the negative identity of victimhood, outrage is a form of social currency, and all dissenters are immoral and must be confronted, often violently.

The natural world has less presence in the lives of the urban middle class than ever. It's a ghost with less tangibility than a Snapchat. And Emerson (I apologize, his writings are the only ones I am familiar with, so I can only make reference to him) was spot-on to place value on labor as a necessary element of a stable human being. Again born out in research and the common sense of the purposes our physicality evolved to fulfill. People need projects, people need exercise. So, not only are people divorced from the greater natural world they exist within, they are exiled from themselves when they get fat playing video games and call a repairman for everything. No capability means no self-confidence. Plays straight into the degeneration of the individual.

[Anonymous No.12890104]

>>12890054

2/2

Where I find fault with Emerson (and as you've said, other Transcendentalists might be different) is that he seems to gloss over the fact that the divine individual is inherently nested within the collective framework of a society and interacts with the work through a vessel geared towards social bonding. Man needs Men ("No, Homo"). The right of absolute freedom in creating your identity isn't a gift to the average person, it's an emotional and existential terror. I've got an IQ of around 130. I'm not a genius, but I can look around at the world and, thus far, navigate myself in a way that is sustainable for my own emotional self-reliance, despite being apart from the crowd in many ways. But there are intellectual pursuits that are far beyond me and I have my own moments of self-doubt. If I can't achieve what a 145 can, how can I reasonably expect a 115, a 100, an 85 to react to and craft from nothing an identity? How can anyone expect that?

I don't mean to place undue emphasis on IQ, but that analogy is the easiest way I have to illustrate my point. I've worked with children from broken homes and I've seen firsthand the toll that trauma and negligence have on the developmental process of a young human being. Family is the most important institution in individual integrity. If the world needs anything right now, it's an understandable philisophical system that spells out how a prosperous and ethical society has to be built from the family unit - the greater collective has to be built up in a way that sustains it, the rights of the individual have to be secured down from the responsibilities instill by it. Anything less is civilizational suicide.

[Anonymous No.12890350]

>>12890104
This is why I like Fuller (I'm sorry I keep shilling her, but she's quickly become one of my favourite philosophers). She's one of the earliest examples of feminism in America, but her feminism is about respecting women (particularly mothers) as an essential part of the family unit and thus argues providing them with property rights and civil liberties in order to make sure they can make decisions that best support themselves and their families. Many modern feminists find contentions with her because she embraces rather than rejects femininity, arguing that patriarchal constructs that artificially suppress both women and minorities can only be fought with the maternal compassion of femininity--To her femininity=nature while masculinity=industry. Given how a lot of modern feminism pushes for women to these industrious careers so that they can suffer alongside the men, it's hard to see how she's wrong.

I'm just going to say that I have have a lot of faith in humanity as a whole (the kind of hostility we see by the radical right and left is not the way to go), but the society we live in is very anti-human.

[Anonymous No.12890363]

>>12890350
You should read Christopher Lasch, he's a psychoanalyst and historian of culture/ideas, who has written on american transcendentalism, the dialectic of selfhood and community being phased out by technology and the managerial state. He had one of the most interesting interpretations of feminism as an historical phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.12890499]

>>12890363
I'll do that. He seems right up my alley. While I have absolutely nothing against women working (they've always worked to a degree), we mustn't forget that motherhood is an extremely important role. Good mothers, IMO, are heroes on par with the bravest of soldiers.

I'm annoyed at the turn that the political "Left" (Left-Right is a bullshit dichotomy, but it's an easy label) has taken. I would probably be classified as a leftist: I consider myself a feminist, I support LGBT and minority rights and so on. The reason I do this though is because all people regardless of sex and gender are human and each contribute to human society. Capitalism and industry however seems to have pitted all of humanity against each other for the sake of profit. The fact that we live in an age where we have a rise of misogynists (MGTOW style groups etc.) who unironically regard women as less than human and the fact that LGBT people fear for their lives due to living with immigrants who themselves have been forced out of their home culture due to western imperialism and capital is a sign that our society is degenerating rather this achieving enlightenment. Yet the Neoliberal "Left" looks at this and calls it progress.

This is why the "doomer" culture I've seen on this board, and cynicism I've seen elsewhere worries me. How can we hope to fix society if we don't learn to stop accepting these social tensions and instead start learning to love each other within our own clearly defined personal boundaries?

[Anonymous No.12890524]

>>12890499
the question is, how can one oppose the managerial state without going far right?

[Anonymous No.12890586]

>>12890524
By not falling into established dichotomies and frameworks. Ideologies such as feminism, fascism, Marxism and so on have all been (often inaccurately) summarised in a way that's easily digestible by the mass media. Only in this kind of environment can you see people spout the phrase "postmodern Marxism" and fail to see the oxymoron in it.

The Far Right is exists because the powers that be need to control the opposition and turn it into an easily dismissible boogeyman. As trite as Orwell references have become in today, right wing groups are comparable to Goldstein's faction from 1984, snatching up people who could genuinely resist the system and sanitising them with a nonsense ideology.

I think we need a return to something resembling Socialisr feminism and something that's truly progressive while ultimately rejecting capital. This kind of group doesn't fit any of the tick boxes-- You can't dismiss them as fascists or man-haters. Furthermore, education on the benefits of nature is important even to young children. Going outdoors can be an adventure in a way that's more than just going to the tourist traps and taking a selfie-- This is especially true to the wild imaginations of children.

[Anonymous No.12890649]

>>12890586
Also, I forgot to mention that a rejection of globalisation and an empahsis on regionalism is also important.

[Anonymous No.12891053]

>>12890499
>because all people regardless of sex and gender are human and each contribute to human society

what possible value does a tranny who spends his entire day on 4chan, a 300-pound welfare queen, and a fucking programmer at Faceberg provide to society?

get off this board faggot. you're not anywhere near as intelligent as you think you are

[Anonymous No.12891266]

>>12891053
use your imagination, anon. Maybe they're a good friend to someone, Maybe they look after their parents or some shit. People's value to society shouldn't be rigidly defined.

Also, your hostility out of nowhere marks you as someone with a pretty toxic, unhelpful approach to the questions you're asking. Not the person you replied to btw