Happy Birthday to writer, philosopher, and abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson (b. May 25, 1803, in Boston, MA), who carefully combined individual thought autonomy with collective action to forge social change. However, his hesitancy to associate directly with political movements also limited his overall influence on American society. Scholar T. Gregory Garvey writes that “As consistent as many of the reform movements that Emerson saw around him were with his own vision for society, the associations that emerged to advocate each individual cause violated what may have been Emerson’s most fundamental ethnical belief: that authentic change cannot occur through piecemeal tinkering with the mechanics of society but must originate in a locus so fundamental that any change in it will also change the structure of society as a whole. For Emerson, this locus is the individual. Much of his writing thus apprises individuals of sources of personal power through which they can create model selves and thereby provoke reform in their societies.”
Recommended reading to learn more:
Citations: T. Gregory Garvey, “Introduction: The Emerson Dilemma,” in The Emerson Dilemma: Essays on Emerson and Social Reform, ed. T. Gregory Garvey (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), xi-xii, xiv, xxi, https://archive.org/details/isbn_0820322415; Allen & Rowell Studio, “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” photograph (location unknown, c. 1875), collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), public domain, https://www.si.edu/object/ralph-waldo-emerson:npg_NPG.78.6.
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