Yesterday I was reading an interesting article Beyond the Greeting Cards about Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was an American essayist, lecturer and poet and who led the Transcendentalism movement of the mid-19th century. And after that I come up with one idea- Emerson and his doctrine of “credibility” made a revolution in human relations, in our whole civilization: in religion, education, lifestyle, ownership and outlook “.
His main ideas are: the need of a new national vision of the world, man’s use of personal experience, the concept of the Supersoul and theory of compensation. All these ideas were set out in his first treatise “Nature “(1836). The treatise begins with the following words:
“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers…Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of others?” Emerson wants to inform us that if we are surrounded by powerful nature, and streams of life rage and sweep through us, so why should we wander the touch of rotting bones of the past, if today the sun shines more brightly than yesterday . There is a new country, new people, and new ideas! So we should discover something new, we should establish our own laws, and do our own service to God. “
Emerson’s doctrine of “heroic individualism” evoke humanistic and democratic character. Developing it, he not only confirms the value of the individual’s identity, but developed the idea of the unity of each individual with whole civilization.