The American Pragmatists outlined in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a profound evolutionary process philosophy. The view of reality they explored was one in which all of reality was seen as an unending …
Emerson’s Call to Greatness
When I ask myself who was Ralph Waldo Emerson the answer that comes to my mind is that he was a call to greatness. Throughout all of his writing what can be heard is a …
Evolution, Enlightenment and Reincarnation: Part 3
In Emerson’s new account of evolutionary spirituality the human soul is on a journey of its own creation – a journey from its original source through the process of manifestation to a perfected state of …
Evolution, Enlightenment and Reincarnation: Part 2
Emerson wondered how would it be possible to evolve to the perfected state in the span of only one lifetime given the weight and drag that Fate places on human development? How could a man …
Evolution, Enlightenment and Reincarnation: Part 1
In 1860 Ralph Waldo Emerson published an essay called Fate in a collection called The Conduct of Life. This essay is written by a mature Emerson, a man who has worked and taught for nearly …
Kant, Coleridge and the Power of Intuition
My current presentation of the evolutionary ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a good place for a discussion about epistemology to fall in. How do we know what we know? is the question that epistemology …
Spiritual Realism and Process Philosophy
As I have read through Emerson’s writing I see two aspects to his metaphysics. On the one hand he describes a spiritual Realism in which the collective human soul of humanity exists in a transcendent …
Emerson’s Dualistic Idealism
Emerson was an Idealist. He believed that ultimately some form of mind was the foundation for the rest of reality. His spiritual teaching about Self-Reliance and the Over-soul are all based on his idealism. In …
The Holistic Vision of Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am sorry that I missed a post this week due to travel, but I am excited to share more from Ralph Waldo Emerson. As we understand more how Emerson’s thought developed we see the …
The Conscious Evolution of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Part 3
Why is the universe evolving? That is a question that must necessarily arise if we are to even entertain the possibility that there might be any form of consciousness directing the process of evolution. If …
The Conscious Evolution of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Part 2
Ralph Waldo Emerson had a spiritual vision explaining how the process of evolution was leading life inevitably in the direction of consciousness, and he did not separate human consciousness and activity from that process. Through …
The Conscious Evolution of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Part 1
The influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on the future trajectory of American philosophy probably cannot be over-estimated. He held a metaphysical vision of an evolving universe. His idealism with its dualistic character would be largely …
Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Gifts of Nature
The idea of Nature is essential to Ralph Waldo Emerson. And throughout his lifetime he created a beautiful and poetic appreciation of the relationship between humankind and nature. As he states “our intercourse with heaven …
The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the first half of the 19th century Ralph Waldo Emerson was part of a small group of forward thinking Unitarian ministers who were ushering in an exciting wave of “new thought” that they later …
Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson? This blog started with Emerson, but quickly turned toward the Pragmatists. Now, however, I am turning back for a time. I want to explore with you this great man of …
Evolutionary Enlightenment and American Philosophy
Before continuing with our fascinating discussion I wanted, in the interest of transparency, to tell a little more about my interest in American Philosophy. The last decades of the 20th century saw a resurgence of …
Test Drive a Worldview
To respond to Andy, I knew that I was getting myself into some trouble by oversimplifying and over-generalizing philosophy and breaking it down into metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. I was lumping things, like logic into epistemology …
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Conception of Nature
The Pragmatic definition of truth may have deep roots in American thought, but to uncover the metaphysical conception that is the ground under Pragmatism’s feet we should look one generation earlier into the mind of …
Nature Mystics and Scientific Progressives
The European Enlightenment produced two responses; Scientific Rationalism and Romanticism. The Scientific Rationalism represented in the science of Sir Isaac Newton and the philosophy of John Locke. Romanticism produced the writing of Goethe in Germany …
Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American Roots of Evolutionary Enlightenment
There has been a revolutionary re-orientation toward reality taking shape in human awareness over the past few centuries as a result of the growing recognition that consciousness, culture and the universe itself are all part …