In his Thinking of Emerson, as in numerous essays, Stanley Cavell – a staunch defender and an expositor of Emerson, in short, a canonical Emersonian apostle – offers a philosophical portrayal of the great 19th century American transcendentalist. For Cavell, situating Emerson in traditional philosophy is both to explicate the philosophical genius of Emerson as…

Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson? Some would contend that he was never a philosopher, since in some of his writings he is very critical of philosophy, for he declares in his essay Experience that “Life is not dialectics… Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy.” Others might suggest that he was a poet, since…