Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) was an American essayist poet and popular philosopher who began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston but rose to international prominence as a lecturer and author of essays such as Self-Reliance History The Over-Soul and Fate. Emerson developed a metaphysics of process an epistemology of moods and a existentialist ethics of self-improvement based on English and German Romanticism Neoplatonism Kantianism and Hinduism. From his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey he influenced generations of Americans and in Europe Friedrich Nietzsche who takes up Emersonian themes like power fate the uses of poetry and history and the critique of Christianity. This collection of Emerson’s brilliant essays includes the following: 1.The American Scholar 2.Compensation 3.Self-Reliance 4.Friendship 5.Heroism 6.Manners 7.Gifts 8.Nature 9.Shakspeare; Or The Poet 10.Prudence 11.Circles