What Is Emerson's View On Individualism

Emerson was a philosopher from the late 1800s. He was at the forefront of the transcendentalism movement and had a strong belief that intuitive thinking is far superior to logical reasoning. He successfully argues that men should reject the constraints of conformity, abandon tradition, and follow their personal intuition. He does this by appealing to people’s sense of pride and fear, using examples and the credibility of others in the past, and using religion to explain why individualism is best.

Primarily, he targets human fear. Emerson explains, “we but half express ourselves, and are ashamed… but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.” (Emerson, 86) Emerson is saying that if we fail to express what is in our hearts because of fear, we are cowards before everyone. No one
Emerson brings out, “Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton.. to be great is to be misunderstood.” (Emerson, 92) The people mentioned in the quote lived in very conservative times. The majority of their contemporaries held on to deeply entrenched ideas and traditions; however, Socrates and the other notable figures mentioned challenged those ideas and came up with their own that ran contrary to what others believed. Their beliefs are now widely accepted today (and have proven true), providing the modern-day foundation of mathematics, literature, composition, and science. For example, people thought that the earth was flat; on the contrary, Galileo conducted science experiments and proved instead that the earth was round. In ancient Greece, the people believed in many deities and did not think twice about it. Socrates, on the other hand, taught people to think for themselves. Emerson believes that if we question things that don’t seem right to us, we can become great just like those memorable academic and religious