Understanding Emerson: "The American Scholar" and His Struggle for Self-Reliance (Hardcover)

~ Kenneth S. Sacks (Author) "WHEN EMERSON DELIVERED THE ANNUAL PHI BETA KAPPA address at Harvard, the First Parish Meetinghouse, larger than any campus lecture hall of its day, could..." (more)
Key Phrases: lyceum talks, miracles controversy, lyceum audience, Phi Beta Kappa, Divinity School, George Ripley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Sack's subtle and fine-meshed Understanding Emerson examines the circumstances in which Emerson's first major public statement . . . took shape. -- Christopher Benfey , Times Literary Supplemen

Sacks is a classical historian and is very good at showing how well Emerson's mastery of classical rhetoric served him. -- Frank Wilson, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Sacks's Emerson is very much a man of his milieu, a stubborn and driven Yankee. . . . Sacks reveals Emerson as a struggling, uncertain figure, whose hunger to achieve self-reliance warred constantly against his need for approval from other quarters. His great effort of self-assertion seems more sympathetic, and less self-indulgent, when seen in this light. -- Review

Review

A detailed, rigorous, yet highly readable and engaging story.
(Library Journal )

As Sacks shows, in his public lectures Emerson took pains not to seem too controversial. . . . But standing before a closed circuit of his intellectual peers, he came out foursquare for a notion of scholarship that, for all its influence on American writers, transcended not only national but also institutional boundaries. . . . Sacks is a classical historian and is very good at showing how well Emerson's mastery of classical rhetoric served him in this address. . . . Reading Emerson's speech today, his turns of phrase may strike us as rather demure, but to his auditors they were fighting words.
(Frank Wilson The Philadelphia Inquirer )

Sack's subtle and fine-meshed Understanding Emerson examines the circumstances in which Emerson's first major public statement . . . took shape. Sacks shows how complicated the occasion was, and how easy it would have been . . . for Emerson to fulfill the expectations of his audience and Alma Mater. Instead, he heeded the hopes of young friends like Thoreau and deliberately insulted almost everyone in the audience.
(Christopher Benfey Times Literary Supplement" )

Sacks's Emerson is very much a man of his milieu, a stubborn and driven Yankee. . . . Sacks reveals Emerson as a struggling, uncertain figure, whose hunger to achieve self-reliance warred constantly against his need for approval from other quarters. His great effort of self-assertion seems more sympathetic, and less self-indulgent, when seen in this light.
(Wilfred M. McClay The Weekly Standard )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 214 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; illustrated edition edition (March 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691099820
• ISBN-13: 978-0691099828
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #401,893 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars America's Scholar, September 17, 2007

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -- 1882) delivered an oration destined to become one of the prime sources of the American vision at Harvard University before Phi Beta Kappa. In "The American Scholar", Emerson set out a path for American thought that would distinguish it from the thought of Europe. But creating a uniquely "American" scholar was among the least of Emerson's purposes. In his oration, Emerson spoke eloquently for a philosophy of idealism in contrast to the Lockean empiricism prevalent in his day. Emerson celebrated individuality and personal experience rather than conformity to received values and mere book-learning as the source of insight and understanding. He looked to common life and the popular culture as an important source to understanding one's experience. And Emerson taught that scholarly life culminated in action rather than in the cloister.

In 1832, Emerson had resigned his pulpit when he found he could no longer accept certain important Christian doctrines. He became a public lecturer, and, as such, was dependent upon a broad public audience to purchase tickets to his speeches to secure his livelihood. In 1838, shortly after delivering "The American Scholar" lecture, Emerson spoke again at Harvard in an oration again rejecting much of received Christian theology. Following these two lectures, Emerson was not invited to speak again at Harvard for 27 years -- until after the Civil War.

Emerson offered a challenging, provocative vision of the role of the American scholar. It is doubtful whether anyone has achieved or could achieve the ideals he set forth in his oration. In his recent short but detailed book, "Understanding Emerson", Professor Kenneth Sacks analyzes Emerson's celebrated speech in the context of his life to try illuminate the continued appeal of Emerson's address. Sacks is a Professor of History at Brown University who specializes in classical history. He was drawn to study Emerson and American Transcendentalism through his interest in Stoicism and Neoplatonic thought.

Sacks's book is in part a commentary on "The American Scholar" together with Emerson's Divinity School address and his subsequent essay, "Self-Reliance." But "Understanding Emerson" approaches Emerson through placing his oration in the context of his life rather than only through the text of the oration. Sachs is interested in understanding why Emerson delivered this speech when he did and its role in his life.

The Emerson that comes through Sacks's book is a torn, divided figure struggling to be faithful to his own insights on the one hand and to win the approval of the public and of his friends on the other hand. Thus, Sacks presents a figure who wanted to become an individual but who was dependent upon popular approval of his lectures and who was reluctant to give offense on controversial matters. Emerson craved the approval of his friends and fellow-Transcendentalists, but many of Emerson's friends had been disappointed in him at the time of the 1837 lecture for his failure to take strong positions against slavery, among other issues of the day. Emerson craved academic recognition, and, probably, an academic position. But his theological and idealistic views did not win approval among his contemporaries at Harvard.

Sack shows how Emerson struggled with these and similar issues and endeavored to resolve and rise above them in his great 1837 address. Emerson himself tried to live his own ideals and to become the type of scholar that he extolled in "The American Scholar." Sacks tells a human story as well as a prototypical American story of rising to oneself over the needs of earning a living and securing the esteem of others. In the process, Sacks sometimes becomes bogged down in biographical detail, making his book and its important message difficult for readers without a good prior background in Emerson's thought. In emphasizing the value of lived, immediate experience and the need to balance self and personal integrity against the demands of others, Emerson struck important themes that resonate through contemporary American thought and life.

Sacks has written a fine book. Its main virtue is that it will encourage its readers to turn to and read or reread Emerson's "American Scholar" for themselves. The full text of Emerson's address is given in an appendix to the book.

Robin Friedman

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The American Oracle finds his voice, February 11, 2004

By	The Sanity Inspector (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

In the 1830s, the new movement of Transcendentalism was flowering in New England, and coming into conflict with established Unitarianism. Abolitionism was coming to political life. Old friendships among Boston's upper-classes were strained, and new alliances forged, as the times shifted. These long-extinct controversies are minutely chronicled here, with the end of showing how formative they were on Ralph Waldo Emerson. This book tells how Emerson found his place in this flood of events.

I chiefly know Emerson as an aphorist, so it was mildly surprising to read how his contemporaries viewed his Lyceum lectures in much the same light. "A poet, not a philosopher" is the general reaction to his early sallies. Emerson was first-rate, from a family of first-rate men, and everyone knew it. His intellectual promise was generally conceded, but his offerings were faulted for lacking in coherence, notable mostly for brilliant _bon mots_. Emerson reproaches himself in his journals for not tackling the big issues of the day. When things finally click in his mind and he produces _The American Scholar_, the impracticality of its prescriptions is not diminished by its ringing tones.

Yet I suspect that Emerson's slipperiness contributed to his works' staying power. If he had constructed a tidy, interlaced, balanced philosophical system, then he would have been comprehended, absorbed, and done with long ago. But as his best sentences urge the reader on, rather than drawing a map, they continue to inspire down to this day. "Hitch your wagon to a star", indeed.

The book is valuable for introducing the reader to the Bostonian intelligentsia of the 1820s and 1830s, and for reproducing this stage in Emerson's career. Even Thomas Carlyle makes a cameo appearance, as Emerson's moral and financial support helps establish the Scot's reputation in the U.S. I learned a lot--and will probably learn a lot more if I make time to re-read this book. It's the sort of work that makes you want to go and study up, so that you can come back and tackle it again; it's that good.