In addition to my Emerson writing, which will probably take up a couple days a week, I’m also planning to blog about William Gaddis’s novel “J R” in conjunction with some thoughts I’ve had recently about developing a philosophy of money. “J R” is back in print, with a new version from Dalkey Press released earlier this month. If this goes well, I then plan to blog about Gaddis’s first novel “The Recognitions” and will cover my philosophy of authenticity (which is basically opposed to the whole Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre model) but that’s well down the road.

In the meantime, I have some thoughts today about Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science” and in particular his fascinating chapter 354. This chapter has stood out for me for a couple reasons.  First, shortly after the twins were born four years ago, I went on a mad reading spree about consciousness. I worked through Dennett’s strange “About Consciouness” and Hofstader’s “I Am a Strange Loop.” It was fascinating stuff, but all rather abstract for me.

This chapter from Nietzsche covers some of the same ground in a way that makes complete sense to me. That doesn’t mean his theory is true, but it certainly makes it fun to write about. The other reason why this chapter stands out is that it’s often cited as background material for Nietzsche’s famous “grain of contempt” epigram about the limitations of language.

So what’s Nietzsche’s theory of consciousness?  His starting point is that, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s probably superfluous:

The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Even now, for that matter, by far the greatest portion of our life actually takes place without this mirror effect; and this is true even of our thinking, feeling, and willing life, however offensive this may sound to older philosophers. For what purpose, then, any consciousness at all when it is in the main superfluous

After trashing Heidegger this morning, I should point out that this sounds a bit like some of the early moments in “Being and Time.” We do, in fact, walk through great portions our lives, even vital sections like work and housework, in a sort of autopilot. Nietzsche ends by asking about purpose, which is actually rare for him — he generally shies away from questions of purpose or essence. By doing so, he draws attention to the theoretical nature of this discussion.  This is not intended to be a Nietzschen observation, rather it’s a hypothesis:

It involves, it seems to me as if the subtlety and strength of consciousness always were proportionate to a man’s (or animal’s) capacity for communication, and as if this capacity in turn were proportionate to the need for communication.

In other words, consciousness and communications develop in tandem. As human learn to communicate, they have a greater need for a subtle consciousness, creating a virtuous cycle between expanding communications skills and expanded consciousness. This leads to more complex societies, where those with greater, more highly developed communications skills are more likely to thrive:

This need and distress have forced men for a long time to communicate and to understand each other quickly and subtly, the ultimate result is an excess of this strength and art of communication—as it were, a capacity that has gradually been accumulated and now waits for an heir who might squander it.

Or, in other words, consciousness is really nothing but a net of communications between people:

Consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need for communication; that from the start it was needed and useful only between human beings (particularly between those who commanded and those who obeyed); and that it also developed only in proportion to the degree of this utility. Consciousness is really only a net of communication between human beings; it is only as such that it had to develop; a solitary human being who lived like a beast of prey would not have needed it.

Everyone who thinks that McLuhan was a forerunner to the Internet, please take note, Nietzsche got there a century earlier. But now Nietzsche takes an interesting turn, because he’s not claiming that communications creates human thought. In fact, he argues that thought is something that exists a priori to consciousness:

Man, like every living being, thinks continually without knowing it; the thinking that rises to consciousness is only the smallest part of all this—the most superficial and worst part—for only this conscious thinking takes the form of words, which is to say signs of communication, and this fact uncovers the origin of consciousness.

The vital elements of thinking — brain activity that regulates reflexes, emotions and all of your routine bodily functions — occurs without this wall of mirrors we call consciousness.  And all other animals have brains that operate in this manner, free of complex communications.  Continuing on, as human beings create these signs and symbols to communicate with one another, we become increasingly self aware:

The human being inventing signs is at the same time the human being who becomes ever more keenly conscious of himself. It was only as a social animal that man acquired self-consciousness—which he is still in the process of doing, more and more.

Now comes the really fascinating part of Nietzsche’s argument. We become increasingly self aware, but we’re stuck with these completely insufficient symbol systems to give voice to this self awareness:

Consequently, given the best will in the world to understand ourselves as individually as possible, “to know ourselves,” each of us will always succeed in becoming conscious only of what is not individual but “average.” Our thoughts themselves are continually governed by the character of consciousness—by the “genius of the species” that commands it—and translated back into the perspective of the herd. Fundamentally, all our actions are altogether incomparably personal, unique, and infinitely individual; there is no doubt of that. But as soon as we translate them into consciousness they no longer seem to be.

Language itself, the thing that makes us conscious humans, then becomes a mechanism for denying our individuality. It shapes our experiences to seem much like all other human experiences. This then gives rise to mistaken beliefs about the nature of reality — beliefs that we live in a world of shadow or appearance. But this dualism is an illusion created by the limitations of language:

The world of which we can become conscious is only a surface- and sign-world, a world that is made common and meaner; whatever becomes conscious becomes by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal; all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to superficialities, and generalization. Ultimately, the growth of consciousness becomes a danger; and anyone who lives among the most conscious Europeans even knows that it is a disease.

That sounds awfully pessimistic and Nietzsche ends the chapter on an even darker note:

We simply lack any organ for knowledge, for “truth”: we “know” (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species; and even what is here called “utility” is ultimately also a mere belief, something imaginary, and perhaps precisely that most calamitous stupidity of which we shall perish some day.

So is Nietzsche making a claim for irrationality here?  I don’t think so.  I think what Nietzsche is saying is that we need to be aware of the limitations of discourse and reason. He’s also saying here — although he doesn’t do it explicitly — that the survival of the species may depend on our ability to keep pushing the boundaries of our language, bringing it closer to the expression of our unique perspectives on existence.

If we continue to worship a static language expressing static thoughts, we’ll become not just herd animals, but anachronistic herd animals incapable of meeting the unique challenges of a dynamic existence.

Back in 2003 and 2004, I still had some naive confidence that it was possible to write intelligently about American politics.  This blog focused on the 2004 Democratic race. It attracted several hundred readers a day eager to dissect the latest polls and debate the electability of Howard Dean. Then one day I just gave it up.  I couldn’t bring myself to write about politics anymore.  I still write sarcastic Tweets about politics, which I think is where our discourse has landed — 120 characters of obvious sarcasm and snark, an ever-scrolling reminder of our national inability to discuss governing our country outside of the ideological prison walls.

Incidentally, these walls aren’t just about red and blue America, they exists within the camps. I see it everyday in Chicago, where the ideological divide is between the establishment (whether it’s run by Daley or Emanuel) and the left-of-center protestors. On the national level, it becomes a fight between the Obama-bots and the Fire Baggers. Republicans have their own Tea Party vs. moderates vs. Wall Street vs. libertarian battles as well.

Does DFW offer a way out of the stupefying echo chambers? I’ll offer my commentary along the way.

The reason why doing political writing is so hard right now is probably also the reason why more young (am I included in the range of this predicate anymore?) fiction writers ought to be doing it. As of 2003, the rhetoric of the enterprise is fucked. 95 percent of political commentary, whether spoken or written, is now polluted by the very politics it’s supposed to be about. Meaning it’s become totally ideological and reductive: The writer/speaker has certain political convictions or affiliations, and proceeds to filter all reality and spin all assertion according to those convictions and loyalties. Everybody’s pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side. Opposing viewpoints are not just incorrect but contemptible, corrupt, evil.

Anything changed? The 95 percent corruption has probably become 100 percent by now. Back then, I could write a piece for Salon.com and have a worthwhile debate in the comments section. Now, regardless of the position you take, writing for a major political journal means being firebombed with comments calling you an idiot and a stooge. People post anonymously and never return to engage — or merely ratchet up the anger if they do.

Conservative thinkers are balder about this kind of attitude: Limbaugh, Hannity, that horrific O’Reilly person. Coulter, Kristol, etc. But the Left’s been infected, too. Have you read this new Al Franken book? Parts of it are funny, but it’s totally venomous (like, what possible response can rightist pundits have to Franken’s broadsides but further rage and return-venom?). Or see also e.g. Lapham’s latest Harper’s columns, or most of the stuff in the Nation, or even Rolling Stone.It’s all become like Zinn and Chomsky but without the immense bodies of hard data these older guys use to back up their screeds. There’s no more complex, messy, community-wide argument (or “dialogue”); political discourse is now a formulaic matter of preaching to one’s own choir and demonizing the opposition. Everything’s relentlessly black-and-whitened. Since the truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture, the whole thing seems to me not just stupid but stupefying. Watching O’Reilly v. Franken is watching bloodsport. How can any of this possibly help me, the average citizen, deliberate about whom to choose to decide my country’s macroeconomic policy, or how even to conceive for myself what that policy’s outlines should be, or how to minimize the chances of North Korea nuking the DMZ and pulling us into a ghastly foreign war, or how to balance domestic security concerns with civil liberties? Questions like these are all massively complicated, and much of the complication is not sexy, and well over 90 percent of political commentary now simply abets the uncomplicatedly sexy delusion that one side is Right and Just and the other Wrong and Dangerous. Which is of course a pleasant delusion, in a way—as is the belief that every last person you’re in conflict with is an asshole—but it’s childish, and totally unconducive to hard thought, give and take, compromise, or the ability of grown-ups to function as any kind of community.

Franken is now, of course, Sen. Franken, which tells you exactly where politics has gone in nine years. What DFW is calling for is hard thought, give and take and compromise. Those things will earn you a primary challenger in 21st Century American politics.

My own belief, perhaps starry-eyed, is that since fictionists or literary-type writers are supposed to have some special interest in empathy, in trying to imagine what it’s like to be the other guy, they might have some useful part to play in a political conversation that’s having the problems ours is.

I’m still waiting for that.  Have you ever read any of Jonathan Franzen’s political writing?  No one would call it empathetic, except maybe to trees. Everyone is caught up in the ideological drama.

Failing that, maybe at least we can help elevate some professional political journalists who are (1) polite, and (2) willing to entertain the possibility that intelligent, well-meaning people can disagree, and (3) able to countenance the fact that some problems are simply beyond the ability of a single ideology to represent accurately.

I do believe that there are journalists who try.  The problem is this — very few conservatives agree with me. Witness Newt Gingrich’s anti-journalist rampages during the debates. They play well because conservatives call anyone not in the conservative journalistic orbit the liberal media.  At a certain point, if only liberals will take these reporters seriously, why bother trying to be even handed? Also notice my bias in this statement: I never watch Fox News and for all I know, there could be reporters on the network who are fair and balanced, (instead of “fair and balanced.”) But I’m just assuming it’s not the case.

Implicit in this brief, shrill answer, though, is obviously the idea that at least some political writing should be Platonically disinterested, should rise above the fray, etc.; and in my own present case this is impossible (and so I am a hypocrite, an ideological opponent could say).

And I cop to this as well, as anyone who reads my Tweets would attest.  My ideological bias is clear. I cannot filter out the political noise around me.

I feel such deep, visceral antipathy that I can’t seem to think or speak or write in any kind of fair or nuanced way about the current administration. Writing-wise, I think this kind of interior state is dangerous. It is when one feels most strongly, most personally, that it’s most tempting to speak up (“speak out” is the current verb phrase of choice, rhetorically freighted as it is). But it’s also when it’s the least productive, or at any rate it seems that way to me—there are plenty of writers and journalists “speaking out” and writing pieces about oligarchy and neofascism and mendacity and appalling short-sightedness in definitions of “national security” and “national interest,” etc., and very few of these writers seem to me to be generating helpful or powerful pieces, or really even being persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already share the writer’s views.

All true, which is why I blurt out my opinions in Tweets and try to shut up about politics as much as possible in conversations and in writing.  Why bother playing Johnny Carson to an online audience of Ed McMahons?

My own plan for the coming fourteen months is to knock on doors and stuff envelopes. Maybe even to wear a button. To try to accrete with others into a demographically significant mass. To try extra hard to exercise patience, politeness, and imagination on those with whom I disagree. Also to floss more.

The flossing is a good idea.  The rest of it … yeah, maybe.  I’ll probably get caught up in the political drama at some point and feel obliged to drive to Wisconsin or Iowa to “get out the vote,” whatever that means. Who exactly are these people who need a personal conversation with a total stranger before they can be encouraged to vote in a national election? I’ve done GOTV canvassing for years now and I still don’t know why campaigns do it, other than the fact that it’s always done and there are funds allocated to keep doing it.

I wish I could end on a more positive note, but I don’t see the situation improving any time soon.  What I think needs to happen in America is for conversations to start taking place out of the political arena on discrete policy issues. If we can approach issues from a “civic” frame, consider all points of view and recommend approaches without plans for political leverage, there might be an opportunity to find broadly-acceptable solutions to American problems. I’m not hopeful.

For anyone who’s never waded into Heidegger, it’s very muddy water.  Heidegger loves weird jargon and uses it inconsistently. He also has a talent for taking something very simple and making it seem opaque. But I don’t want to get into the details because philosophers argue about this stuff nonstop and I really don’t want to join in.

I come here not to debate Heidegger but to bury him. This weekend I took a step back and examined the Heidegger biography more closely.  I’m 100 percent convinced that this guy was a Nazi — not just a Nazi-sympathizing careerist, but a full-on Hitler worshiping party member who ratted out colleagues to the Gestapo, preached the importance of National Socialism to impressionable students and remained a badge wearing member of the party until the end of the war.

This BBC documentary is very illuminating on the subject. I also highly recommend Walter Kaufmann’s book “Nietzsche, Heidegger and Buber” for details on his Nazi past and how it was reflected in his philosophy. Some other sources (deeply flawed but including important details) are Emanuel Faye’s recent book on Heidegger (which is pretty close to a complete travesty, actually, but he provides critical evidence of Heidegger’s Nazi sympathies throughout the war) and Rudiger Safranski’s intellectual biography of Heidegger (whose conclusions are more sympathetic to Heidegger but his biographical material is equally damning.)

I believe that the details of Heidegger’s Nazi past shifts the burden onto his admirers to justify why anyone should continue down his philosophical path. Many philosophers have attempted to do just that for decades but I believe that what we now know shifts the burden of proof and requires answers to five questions:

Can you defend Heidegger’s scholarship? Nietzsche scholar and translator Walter Kaufmann once tried to have a serious conversation with Heidegger about why their interpretations of Nietzsche were polar opposites. Basically Heidegger disregarded everything Nietzsche ever published and relied on his unpublished notebooks (which, incidentally, was the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche.) Kaufmann, who actually translated the notebooks as well as a dozen Nietzsche books and knew full well which notebook fragments had value in Nietzsche scholarship and which were doodles he abandoned, wanted to confront Heidegger about this. Heidegger tried to pull a fast one, saying that the “truly valuable” Nietzsche writings were in notebooks deemed illegible. This was complete nonsense — how do you know they’re valuable if you can’t read them — but also turned out to be a flat lie, when they were translated a few years later and were found to be nothing special. Kaufmann says that this style is evident throughout Heidegger’s entire corpus — including Being and Time. Kaufmann’s attack on Heidegger’s scholarship is a serious charge and I believe that Heidegger scholars have a responsibility to shed light on it.

Enough of the Delphic interpretation — can you demonstrate that “Being and Time” as it exists holds together as a coherent philosophic work? There’s a lot of great writing about “Being and Time,” but great second or third hand scholarship cannot repair a deeply flawed, nearly incomprehensible original. Heidegger only delivered 2/3 of his promised first half of “Being and Time.” So who knows what the thing was supposed to me … but even though Heidegger moved beyond the ideas, he never repudiated or seriously elaborated on the text and boasted after World War 2 that the book was the only serious work of philosophy in the 20th century. Never mind that the guy was an asshole, “Being and Time” is his magnum opus.  If the work as it exists doesn’t add up, it calls into question why any of his work deserves serious scholarship.

Next, can you prove that their are any original and vital insights from “Being and Time” that remain relevant today? As far as I understand it, the two insights of “Being and Time” are 1) that people are at their best when they are immersed in flow and 2) the “I” does not equal the “one.” But are these genuine philosophical insights? A person cannot be immersed in flow all day long, every day. Adapting to a technological culture is all about managing the tedious moments so that you can find moments for flow. And many contemporary humans find this flow when immersed in highly technological activities, ones that Heidegger found dehumanizing. Maybe Heidegger found his days in a wooded cabin chopping wood deeply authentic, I’d find them a version of hell. As for the “I” not equaling the “one,” it’s hardly an original thought. I also think that  Heidegger’s ideas on authenticity are absolute nonsense … Kaufmann argues persuasively that they’re actually polemics for the Catholic faith, which Heidegger had not yet abandoned when he started the project. In other words, he stole many ideas from Kierkegaard, then masked them in secular language without adapting them to secular life. Also Heidegger, who is trying to make a case that man is never a static be, but is rather always becoming, doesn’t account for the fact that being might be different in other eras, other cultures or even within the same person depending on the progress of the becoming. His form of philosophy is to bully his experience onto all of humanity.

Fourth question: why should we study Heidegger’s views on poetry when he clearly has a tin ear for the art form? Thankfully Wittgenstein never tortured us with bad poetry when he called for a philosophy of description. Emerson, on the other hand, was both a skilled poet and someone who inspired great poets. Even Nietzsche seems to have more credibility on the subject. Is there anything original Heidegger has to say about poetry?

Fifth and final question: can you justify Heidegger’s view on technology as being anything more than standard issue Luddite-ism?  One example: Heidegger said in his final interview that we should be horrified by the photos of earth taken from outer space. The vast majority of humanity thinks the exact opposite. Rather than being horrified by our new understanding of humanity’s place in the galaxy, many people find it awe inspiring.

Heidegger found technology to be dehumanizing. Today, that’s a common critique, but it’s far less interesting than applying what Wittgenstein had to say about primitive language to the way technology is being used today. We now live in a world with a language that consists of nothing but pointing.  Wittgenstein’s thoughts on how we understand simple commands can be seen in action with AI technologies like Siri on the iPhone.

Heidegger’s style of critique invites further alienation of his readers from the world around us while Wittgenstein’s philosophy gives us a deeper understanding of it. I believe the burden of proof is on the Heidegger scholars and apologists to disclose why anyone should keep reading him.

If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust, I shall do well to examine those rags very closely to see how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on. But if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous. But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an examination of details in philosophy.

This reminds me of another parable, from David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College speech,  and given how Wittgenstein obsessed DFW was at times,  I get the feeling that he was looking here for an opportunity to recast the parable:

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other’s an atheist, and they’re arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. the atheist says, “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God-and-prayer thing. Just last month, I got caught off away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I couldn’t see a thing, and I was totally lost, and it was fifty below, and so I did, I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out, ‘God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me!’ ”And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled: “Well then, you must believe now,” he says. “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist rolls his eyes like the religious guy is a total simp: “No, man, all that happened was that a couple Eskimos just happened to come wandering by, and they showed me the way back to the camp.” … The point here is that I think this is one part of what the liberal arts mantra of “teaching me how to think” is really supposed to mean: to be just a little less arrogant, to have some “critical awareness” about myself and my certainties… because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

Let me return now to Wittgenstein, or more accurately to Stanley Cavell’s exegesis of Wittgenstein in “The Claim to Reason.”  He writes about the Wittgenstein parable:

(This) is an examination that exposes one’s convictions, one’s sense of what must and what cannot be the case; so it requires a breaking up of one’s sense of necessity, to discover truer necessities. To do that I have to get into the state of mind in which I am “inclined to suppose” that something I take to be impossible may be happening. Which means that I have to experiment in believing what I take to be prejudices, and consider that my rationality may itself be a set of prejudices. This is bound to be a painful prospect. And it is likely to lead to ridiculous postures. But no more ridiculous than the posture of looking for an explanation in a region in which you have no inclination to suppose it may lie. (We might call such an activity “academic”.) – So it is I, as I stand, who oppose such an examination of details in philosophy. It was always a mark of Honor in a philosophy to be opposed. But it would miss the point to take reassurance from that; for that would mean that you conceive yourself to be exempt from the fear and pain which naturally oppose serious philosophy. “Psychophobia”, I learn from a recent text in psychoanalysis, means both “fear of one’s inner life” and “fear of ghosts” It can motivate intellectuality as well as anti-intellectuality. And philosophy can be the fruit, or work in the root, of either.

What I find fascinating about these two parables is that, rather than making a case for the metaphysical or supernatural, they point out just how rigorous and courageous a scientific mind needs to be.  A scientific mind unwilling or unable to examine the rags falls prey to even greater prejudices than one who would conclude that a mouse was created out of rags or God sent Eskimos to the rescue.

• There’s no squaring Christian theology with Emerson’s claims in this essay. He has no obligation to do so, but the Sermon on the Mount counts as nothing if you buy Emerson’s cosmic accounting in this essay. While I’m not a Christian, I do believe that the traditional faith has a greater appreciation for injustice in the world than Emerson’s theory of morality and justice.
• Emerson’s belief in a form of cosmic accounting of right and wrong should serve as a cautionary tale about extrapolating the laws of nature too literally. Physics is our understanding of the world at this moment, based on math and experimentation. It is subject to revision based on future knowledge. Creating a cosmic theory of justice based on incomplete cosmology is perilous.
• It’s possible to tease out some interesting parallels with Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, especially in regard to good/bad morality, but this essay annoys me too much to give it any credit.

In short, I believe that the universe is cold, cruel and out to kill us. We’re accidents by species and birth. To believe that every action has a reaction, every compensation a cost, is to create the conditions for massive envy and despair. Anyone who believes this as a child will be doomed to a miserable life unless he or she is lucky enough to roll the dice into the top .1 percent.

And so I’m going to leave the final word to Woody Allen:

People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control.

Take, for example, the fourth line in the essay:

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.

The words pop from the page. Emerson formed them from classical rhetorical structure. Note the parallel “to believe” phrases. Speakers rely on phrases like these to create a rhythm in the text, to coil up the gathering thought so it can snap to conclusion. Also, for this rhetorical structure to work properly, it must begin simply and then extend.  Emerson starts with a generic “to believe your own thought.”  A phrase that read “To believe your own thought is genius,” is provocative, but unmemorable.

The second “to believe” phrase is the prize: what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men. That thought could stand alone as it’s own sentence. But note that Emerson never actually takes that step. What Emerson says before and after this sentence is that honestly spoken sentiment is more valuable than thought. Why would that be the case?  I’m going to turn to Nietzsche, Gay Science 354, for my theory:

Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely individual – there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they do not appear so any longer.

(T)he world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised world; that everything which becomes conscious becomes just thereby meagre, relatively stupid, – a generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the herd; that with the evolving of consciousness there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification, superficial-isation, and generalisation.

Indeed, we have not any organ at all for knowing, or for “truth”: we “know” (or believe, or fancy) just as much as may be of use in the interest of the human herd, the species ; and even what is here called “usefulness” is ultimately only a belief, a fancy, and perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be ruined.

Nietzsche’s punchline comes in Twilight of the Idols:

We stop appreciating ourselves enough when we communicate. Our actual experiences are not in the least talkative. They could not express themselves even if they wanted to. For they lack the words to do so. When we have words for something we have already gone beyond it. In all speech there is a grain of contempt. Language, it seems, was invented only for average, middling, communicable things. The speaker vulgarizes himself as soon as he speaks.

Going back to Emerson’s quote, the genius does not lie in the “truth” of any given statement, the genius lies in the courageous self-deceit of listing to that inner voice and letting it speak your sentiment without attempting to please the herd.

So why does Emerson need the rhetoric? Two reasons.  One, rhetoric is a wonderful shorthand. It provides speakers and writers an opportunity to quickly and bluntly deliver a core message in a powerful way. It took me four lines from Nietzsche to convey what Emerson does in one powerfully designed sentence.

The second reason is more important. Rhetoric is democratic. It reaches all ears, much like fast food reaches all hungry mouths. Emerson never would have reached a popular audience without the memorable rhetoric. While there’s a risk of being misunderstood, Emerson answers that in another famous rhetorical flourish in Self Reliance:

Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—’Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

 

What’s interesting about this piece of rhetoric is how it demonstrates Nietzsche’s grain of contempt theory. Obviously, Emerson doesn’t believe that every lazily-formed, ill-considered word out of every boastful American’s mouth is as wise as the words of Pythagoras, Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. But if you take all of these words of unfiltered sentiment together, you get what Whitman later called the great poem that is America. Let the democratic organ turn these words into generalization. We’ll end up with far greater wisdom from a democratic nation of people speaking their own sentiments than if we instruct everyone to speak carefully as if the fate of the nation rested on their words.

It’s this faith in democracy that separates Emerson from Nietzsche. Emerson has faith in our stupidity. He’s willing to accept it and own it. If you trick Americans into thinking they always have something valuable to say — and that they are exceptional — the end result will be a collective voice of wisdom that is exceptional.

This puts me in a tough position because for writers like Emerson, reading isn’t enough for me. I need to write something about the text to reach an understanding of it. But what’s the point of writing if no one is reading?

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Day is an appropriate, opportune time to examine a commonly overlooked theme of Emerson’s Self Reliance: his critique of progress.  King, now considered a hero of progressives, was far too fatalistic to embrace that mantle.  In The True and Only Heaven, Christopher Lasch wrote:

Near the end of his life, King told his old Montgomery congregation that he was no longer an optimist, although he still had hope.  The distinction between optimism and hope was implicit in many of his earlier statements as well. He had seen too much suffering to embrace the dogma of progress, even though he was always careful to explain that he objected only to theories of ‘automatic’ or ‘inevitable’ progress and to ‘false,’ and ‘superficial’ optimism.

These thoughts bear a great resemblance to Emerson:

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

What King came to understand – and Emerson understood intuitively even though he shrunk from fights – is that the human struggle is never ending. There is no great end point to political life, right/left, traditional/radical. Those who hold dear to an ideology believing that only the failure to enact it in full has prevented its inherent goodness will never live to see this Platonic vision.  The end of one fight merely sets off another. All progress – even technological progress – comes with a cost:

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity, entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

Emerson’s disbelief in progress places his noncomformism in a different light. If struggle is a constant in life – including class struggle – it’s folly to assume another’s grand solution as your own:

A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

You choose to take a mere approximation of your thought. Better to follow your own beliefs – better in fact to wrong – and to let the democracy smooth out the rough edges systematically. As Samuel Beckett wrote, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Perhaps Beckett was an Emersonian too:

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience dies with them. And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental—came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire; and what the man acquires, is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes.

It begins:

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.

There’s a strong air of bravado in this sentence. Emerson is calling out American manhood — which places distance between him and contemporary readers for the sexist edge, among other reasons. There’s also the strange word ‘whoso’ and the unnecessary comma staring us in the face. But the comma gives the sentence balance and drama. You can feel the oratorical pause. ‘Must’ is a strong word in any context, but after the comma it takes on extra heft. Also note the negative word ‘nonconformist.’ Emerson does not look for an affirmative alternative — the rogue or maverick of contemporary political chest thumping. He’s concerned most with destroying conformity in this sentence and in this paragraph. What follows are numerous forms of conformity.

He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.

Masochistic teachers have tortured students for generations with that ‘immortal palms’ phrase. How many students have dreaded being asked the meaning of it on a final exam? I believe that these teachers are being lazy — the phrase isn’t that important and it distracts from all the ideas around it. It simply means ‘seeks glory.’ I actually find the end of the sentence far more puzzling. Don’t be hindered by goodness, but explore if it’s actually goodness … I assume that’s why Emerson meant. But that might not be correct. The ‘name of goodness’ phrase is ambiguous. Emerson may mean that one shouldn’t be hindered identifying who is good, since name probably refers to people. The conjunctive phrase is quite strange. Why did Emerson use ‘be’ instead of ‘is’? There’s another Emersonian must, signaling great importance, but what exactly is ‘it’?

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

This sentence is far more clear. It’s also close to blasphemy. Emerson doesn’t say here that nothing’s more sacred than the integrity of your mind — he’s saying that nothing at all is sacred except that integrity. I don’t believe it’s an overstatement to say that Emerson repeals the Ten Commandments with this sentence and replaces it with a single dictum.

Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

It’s so strange to see ‘absolve’ used in this context. Emerson calls for you to forgive and pardon yourself. For what? I can only assume it’s for your errors. I believe that Emerson is calling for people (men, in his context) to be brave and not fear mistakes. Then we get hit with ‘suffrage,’ which contemporary English speakers think of only as the right to vote. In Emerson’s context, it means a prayer on behalf of another — in this case you. So you could rephrase this sentence as ‘forgive yourself of your trespasses and the world will forgive you as well.’

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church.

The syntax of this sentence is maddening, but effective. ‘I remember an answer’ is, in fact, the most important fact of this sentence, which sets up a punchline behind it. The description of this old scold as a ‘valued advisor’ is a beautiful piece of sarcasm from Emerson. ‘Importune’ is a word beautifully chosen as well — I picture a hectoring bore at Emerson’s ear demanding an answer. Finally, you have to admire the mocking ‘dear old doctrines’ that Emerson cites, which pretty much declares that only an old fogey would care about such things.

On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” my friend suggested—“But these impulses may be from below, not from above.”

The beauty of this sentence is the way Emerson sets it up. I actually think Emerson’s ‘valued advisor’ is making a solid point. Who knows where our intuitions begin? Who has confidence in every impulse? You might be tempted to have these thoughts if the sentence arrives without proper framing, but Emerson isn’t interested in having an even-handed debate on the matter. He’s rigging the contest for intuition.

I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.”

Once again, Emersonian bravado (and blasphemy) are on display. Emerson has full faith in his intuition and will trust it even if it’s in direct conflict with the traditions of faith.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

This is a restatement of the second sentence. Just in case it wasn’t clear to you when mentioned in the context of mind, Emerson now says that his nature stands above all laws, which I can only assume includes the Ten Commandments, U.S. and Massachusetts Constitutions, civil and criminal laws and Concord local statutes.

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Here is Emerson at his most proto-Nietzschean. This sounds very much like good/bad morality in Genealogy of Morals, as opposed to the Christian good/evil morality. Emerson is defining the good as something in synch with his nature. Except he doesn’t use the world nature here, he uses constitution. In this context, it most likely means his mental and psychological makeup. Does Emerson mean that anything that upsets his mental and psychological makeup is necessarily bad?

A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.

Everything in the world is nominal and short lasting except for you. It’s important to point out that Emerson doesn’t believe this is reality — back to my earlier Matrix discussions, he’d have to advocate that we’re all brains in vats to make this literal case. Rather, he’s saying that people should behave as if we’re all living in a matrix and nothing around us is real. It’s a very dangerous thought.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

This is a critique of authority. Emerson is shaking his head in disgust for how quickly we give up when faced with authoritative opposition. The use of the word ‘ashamed’ is particularly important. There’s an element of self congratulations in this sentence, that Emerson is a superior human well above listening to the authority of police officers and the various bosses we have to deal with in life.

Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right.

Perhaps realizing that the previous sentence can come across as arrogant, Emerson admits his own failing here — he is too easily swayed by decent, articulate people. He needs to check himself for this bias, remembering to stay focused on the content and not the art.

I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.

An interesting thing is happening in these sentences — Emerson is in fact describing himself, but as the speaker, not the listener. He always came across in public performances as decent, articulate and persuasive. The anger he pretends to aim at himself is actually aimed at his weak minded listeners who applaud his words but don’t really understand him. No one would consider Emerson a rude man, but he grabs onto that word and declares that maybe his speeches should be a little more raw. Maybe his performance is getting in the way of truth.

If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?

Emerson changes gears abruptly with an attack on philanthropy. American history is littered with great monsters who were also major philanthropists. He anticipates the robber barons with this sentence.

If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, ‘Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off.

Conservatives have often used this sentence as proof that Emerson is one of them — but that’s not the case at all. What Emerson is speaking against, very specifically, is the kind of internationalist noblesse oblige that is completely blind to injustice close to home, which should be completely obvious in the next sentence:

Thy love afar is spite at home.

As clear as this statement is, it’s also oddly out of place with the argument of the paragraph so far. Why has Emerson switched from a discussion of intuition to questions of charity and political responsibility? He then characterizes what this hypothetic rebuke would mean:

Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.

And now it becomes clearer what Emerson is saying. The philanthropy discussion is, in fact, a diversion — Emerson is actually illustrating why a person should be indecorous, even uncivil. He’s talking about speaking truth to power … or more accurately, truth to everyone. Damn the consequences. And there’s clear punctuation to this point:

Your goodness must have some edge to it—else it is none.

But just when I have a handle on what Emerson is saying, he then makes a very striking statement and goes on a puzzling diversion:

The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines.

This is another Emerson sentence that can only be properly understood when the ideas are balanced. Talk about the ‘doctrine of hatred’ is striking and memorable. But Emerson is not saying that people should preach this doctrine at all times. He’s giving a very specific example of when it’s appropriate — when a ‘doctrine of love’ is expressed with ‘pules and whines.’ The phrase ‘crocodile tears’ comes to mind. Emerson is really expressing the need to call out hypocrisy. Then again, Emerson follows up that sentence with this one:

I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me.

I cannot fathom what Emerson is up to with this line. Is he saying that he shuns his particular family members when ‘genius’ (which I can only assume is his intuition) speaks in conflict with them? Or is he saying that he shuns the concept of sympathetic family relations — which could also be a metaphor for all sentimental connections — when it conflicts with intuitive genius? Then he writes:

I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.

I haven’t a clue what that means. And also:

I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.

Again, I’m at a loss. I guess he’s saying that he’ll put his whims ahead of sympathetic relations and hope these intuitions are, in the end, more than whims. But whether they are or not, one cannot spend his time explaining himself, so go with the whims. If he means anything beside this, I’d love to know.

Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.

We get a little clarity here. Perhaps these past few puzzling lines were about cloistering himself to write, at the exclusion of loved ones. Emerson is saying that his intuition — perhaps his literary muse — always has to come first and he cannot be made to explain for this. As Emerson comes to the close of the paragraph, he returns to the question of philanthropy, which is clearly an issue on his mind and bothering him:

Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations.

Remember that earlier, Emerson was speaking about a very different situation — about a hypocrite racist who had a sudden love of the enslaved in Barbados. Now it’s personal and specifically about his obligations. He then makes a Biblical allusion to Cain:

Are they my poor?

Is that a rhetorical question? I don’t believe it is. Emerson is trying to make a point that we do have an obligation to some, but we need to clarify who and why we have these obligations:

I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.

Or, in other words, those poor Barbados slaves. He has no connection to their plight — the money is merely an expression of bad conscience and Emerson doesn’t feel obliged to them. Instead Emerson feels obligation to people with ‘spiritual affinity’:

There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meetinghouses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Note that Emerson never specifically names who has this spiritual affinity with him — and as I noted yesterday, Thoreau would choke at the idea of Emerson going to prison for anyone. The important point is that this sentence, in no way, places Emerson in the same camp with conservatives who don’t believe in government assistance for the poor. Emerson is defining how we should determine who is worthy of our help. And in contradiction to conservatives, helping the disposed in foreign lands first is clearly wrong in Emerson’s way of thinking.

And that concludes my exegesis on one particularly memorable paragraph of Self Reliance. I hope my analysis put some light on the complexity of Emerson’s ideas and style of expression. He’s not a writer to be swallowed in big chunks, he needs to be nibbled, tasted, questioned and nibbled again. And even then, I cannot be sure that I’ve understood him well.

Just the words self reliance today call to mind survivalists hoarding gold in a Montana cabin. Others may hear these words and think about ending government programs like food stamps and welfare or cutting taxes on the wealthy. Many literary critics have suggested that Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab of “Moby-Dick” was intended as a parody of Emerson’s self reliant man. The more serious critique of writers like Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and George Santayana is that Emerson’s Self Reliance is bloodless, disdainful of history and community, a disturbing guide to a shallow, naive American culture.

D.H. Lawrence, building on this anti-Emersonian critique, famously described American culture this way:

But you have there the myth of the essential white American. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust are a sort of by play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted.

That line reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. As Harold Bloom would no doubt agree, McCarthy is a direct literary descendant of Emerson:

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or nill. Any man who could discover His own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man’s destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. This desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

There’s no more terrifying character in American literature than The Judge in Blood Meridian, an old west Ahab with a touch of Charles Manson. There’s a touch of Emerson in Ethan Edwards from The Searchers and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. A particular type of American terror can grow from seedlings of thought like:

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it.

Imagine a psychopathic loner, one who instead of reading Salinger picks up Emerson, and comes across this out of context:

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, ‘O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law.

Or how about this grand rationalization for evil acts:

I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” my friend suggested—“But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.”

Or to the Internet blow hard who spouts his opinions with complete conviction that his thoughts both reflect truth and mirror the mind of America, Emerson provides this cover:

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

Finally, darkest of all, there’s this nugget:

Your goodness must have some edge to it—else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me.

All of these quotes are taken out of context and I will return to them in subsequent essays to remove some (but not all) of the sting. Judging Emerson by these quotes in isolation doesn’t concern me because his writing is clear enough to rebut all but the most irrational misreaders. However, these quotes should remind all Emerson readers that as much as we might like to read his most colorful lines as epigrams, there’s peril in that practice. If he’d intended to be read like Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, he would have written that way.

A more serious criticism of Self Reliance returns to the D.H. Lawrence quote above, which was highlighted in Richard Slotkin’s seminal work Gunfighter Nation. As Slotkin notes, the lone American has been mythologized into this heroic figure who does the world’s dirty work, whether it’s killing Native Americans or fighting pre-emptive wars. Theodore Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West mythologizes this triumph of the Anglo-Saxon world. Roosevelt called our ultimate triumph over Native America:

The crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements, and it must be taken in connection with them. Its true significance will be lost unless we grasp, however roughly, the past race-history of the nations who took part therein.

TR’s blunt truth — much in Emerson’s fashion — is obscured today. Throughout the book he lauds the United States expansion for leading to far less “blood mingling” than had occurred in other American conquests. This idol, the man of toughing talking hard truths and indecorous action in the name of God, has appeared to many through the generations to echo Emerson as well.

This too is false, which will only become fully apparent when we get to Thoreau’s eulogy many weeks from now. But as the closing words of History hinted, Emerson was not on the side of conquest, but rather of the natives and all of history’s losers. He felt that the long march to national identity should include an effort to become more like the natives of this land, which was a call his disciple Thoreau heeded.

Neither was Emerson a believer in laissez-faire political economy. In a particularly harsh moment, Emerson seems to attack the entire concept of a compassionate progressive state:

Do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meetinghouses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

A close reading of this passage, however, reveals a far more subtle political message. Emerson is not refusing redistribution because he feels entitled to “his money,” as we often hear in politics today. Instead, Emerson wants to share his largesse with “a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold.” Far from wanting to distance himself from communities, Emerson wants to build them. In fact, he is willing “to go to prison” for their justice.

Emerson never did spend time in prison — and he criticized Thoreau’s tax-protest imprisonment as pointless. According to some accounts, Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”

Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience inspired Gandhi, who in turn inspired Martin Luther King. And as Harold Bloom has written on numerous occasions, there are always two sides to Emerson and his influence. There’s the cold, dark Emerson of American individualism and self assuredness and there’s the idealistic, hopeful Emerson of non violent, sacrificial social reform.

I don’t believe that either extreme genuinely captures the Ralph Waldo Emerson on the page. The truth is both and neither. Emerson is a man who saw an economic depression as a great opportunity for freedom. He’s strange and harder to comprehend than he at first appears. But the longer I linger on his works, the more hope I see for America’s future. Emerson’s influence doesn’t have to end nor does it have to follow established paths. Blazing a new path of Emersonian wisdom, based on your own experiences, is precisely what he’d like you to do with his work.