Emerson,"Self Reliance" and Social Contract

Paper Summary:

Emerson's individualism appears radical when set against the biblical tradition, but it seems conservative to a late-twentieth-century observer in its inability to sever its connections to the sexism and racism that accompanied the inscription of Lockean individualism into the founding documents of the United States. The dominant discourse of that culture spoke in theory about liberty and justice for all individuals, but in practice in 1841 it defined the term "individual" in a strictly limited way. To be an individual was to be white, Christian, male and property-owning. In his public and private writings Emerson struggles to recognize and disavow the exclusion of women and blacks from the social contract, with mixed results. The purpose of this paper is to examine the context of the social contract within the writings of Emerson.

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