Joseph Urbas

This study offers the first comprehensive account of Emerson's philosophy since his philosophical rehabilitation began in the late 1970s. It builds on the historical reconstruction proposed in the author's previous book, Emerson's Metaphysics, and like that study draws on the entire Emerson corpus—the poetry and sermons included. The aim here is expository. The overall though not exclusive emphasis is on identity, as the first term of Emerson's metaphysics of identity and flowing or metamorphosis. This metaphysics, or general conception of the nature of reality, is what grounds his epistemology and ethics, as well as his esthetic, religious, and political thought. Acknowledging its primacy enables a general account like this to avoid the anti-realist overemphasis on epistemology and language that has often characterized rehabilitation readings of his philosophy. After an initial chapter on Emerson's metaphysics, the subsequent chapters devoted to the other branches of his thought also begin with their "necessary foundation" in identity, which is the law of things and the law of mind alike. Perception of identity in metamorphosis is what characterizes the philosopher, the poet, the scientist, the reformer, and the man of faith and virtue. Identity of mind and world is felt in what Emerson calls the moral sentiment. Identity is Emerson's answer to the Sphinx-riddle of life experienced as a puzzling succession of facts and events.

Emerson 's philosophical rehabilitation, begun in the late 1970s, has neglected an important branch of his thought: his metaphysics. Revisionist interpretations have generally followed Stanley Cavell's anti-metaphysical lead, privileging process and pluralism to the exclusion of any ultimate grounding principle. Russell Goodman's work takes Emerson scholarship in a new direction less hostile to metaphysics. His reading of Emerson 's "Nominalist and Realist" attempts to balance the principles of change and permanence, albeit in "unstable" alternation. What Goodman calls instability I call synthesis or "bi-polarity," made possible by a metaphysical doctrine whose core principle is universal causation. Emerson 's "causationism" openly embraces both Nominalism and Realism as true to opposite poles of the same causal and ontological continuum—that of reality itself.

This article examines Stanley Cavell's method of reading Emerson—and finds it wanting in rigor and fidelity to the original. Though Cavell declares himself to be among those who "care about the Emersonian text," who are "concerned to preserve the order of words of the Emersonian text," there is a substantial amount of evidence that this is not always the case. A close reading of Cavell's readings of Emerson reveals a pattern of misconstrual and misquotation whose effect is to strip away the "otherness" of Emerson's words and further the project of refashioning him as a secular, skeptical, postmetaphysical thinker.

What is properly Emersonian about moral perfectionism? Perhaps the best answer is: not much. Stanley Cavell's signature concept, which claims close kinship to Emerson's ethical philosophy, seems upon careful examination to be rather far removed from it. Once we get past the broad, unproblematic appeals to Emerson's “unattained but attainable self,” and consider the specific content and implications of perfectionism, the differences between the two thinkers become too substantive – and too fraught with serious misunderstandings – to be ignored. It is above all Cavell's complete disregard for the Emersonian “moral sentiment” that jeopardizes his claim to be a continuator of Emerson's legacy in ethical philosophy. I would not deny that Cavell's own work stands as an extraordinary contribution to contemporary ethics. Nor would I dispute his title as the living philosopher who has done more than any other to restore Emerson to his rightful place in the history of American philosophy, as a thinker worthy of the highest consideration. Still less would I discount the boldness and originality of Cavell's readings of Emerson. What I am contesting, rather, is the propriety of attaching the label “Emersonian” to the notion of perfectionism, especially in view of its strong anti-metaphysical bias. The Emerson canon provides ample grounds for rejecting Cavell's claim as largely unsubstantiated and in a number of crucial ways inconsistent with the moral sentiment's firm grounding of ethics in ontology.

Two things have been missing from discussions of Emerson and skepticism. The first—and the most glaring omission, given his precise, unambiguous definition of skepticism as “unbelief in cause and effect” (“Worship”)—is Emerson’s causationism. The second is his view of skepticism as organically related to a wide array of other forms of anti-realism or “romance.” Only the first can explain the second and thereby give us a better sense of how Emerson’s specific response to skepticism as a philosophical problem fits into his broader, resolutely realist vision of the conduct of life.