Emerson, the Philosopher of Oppositions

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-009-60455-0
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 482 g

Ralph Waldo Emerson developed a metaphysics of process, an epistemology of moods, and an 'existentialist' ethics of self-improvement, drawing on sources including Neoplatonism, Kantianism, Hinduism, and the skepticism of Montaigne. In this book, Russell B. Goodman demonstrates how Emerson's essays embody oppositions – one and many, fixed and flowing, nominalism and realism – and argues, in tracing Emerson's main positions, that we miss the living nature of his philosophy unless we take account of the motions and patterns of his essays and the ways in which instability, spontaneity, and inconsistency are dramatized within them. Goodman presents Emerson as a philosopher in conversation with Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, William James, Wittgenstein, and Cavell. He finds a variety of skepticisms in Emerson's work – about friendship, language, freedom, and the world's existence – but also an acknowledgement of skepticism as a 'wise' form of life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goodman, Russell B.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. Emerson's philosophical style; 2. Varieties of skepticism in Emerson's thought; 3. Emerson and skepticism: a reading of 'Friendship'; 4. Paths of coherence through Emerson's philosophy: the case of 'nominalist and realist'; 5. Emerson, Montaigne, skepticism; 6. Reading 'Manners'; 7. Emerson's 'experience' and Plato's republic; 8. On 'The Poet'; 9. Emerson's natures; 10. Emerson and Hinduism; Afterword; Bibliography.

Über Autor(innen)

Goodman, Russell B.
Russell B. Goodman is Regents Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He is the author of American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition (Cambridge, 1990); Wittgenstein and William James (Cambridge, 2002); and American Philosophy before Pragmatism (Oxford, 2015).