Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essay: ‘Self-Reliance’

"Crossing the Pasture," 1871–1872, by Winslow Homer. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. In his essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson praises dependence on oneself to get work done. Public Domain

In 1841, American writer-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) published “Self-Reliance,” placing the ingenuity of the individual above an unquestioning acquiescence to the collective.

It appeared just before The Communist Manifesto ennobled victimhood of one collective and victimization of another. Emerson’s essay gloriously affirms the individual as a singular force for goodness, truth, and beauty. To him, a human represents a “divine idea” to be unleashed, not contained.

A portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson in an 1880 albumen print copied by J.J. Hawes from an 1857 daguerreotype by J.J. Hawes. Public Domain

As the 19th century approached middle age, revolutions in science, technology, and culture abounded: The steamboat, steam train, and telegraph promised to shrink time–space as never before; Beethoven’s most original works lifted the music world into unprecedented orbits; and explorers discovered a new continent, Antarctica. There seemed to be no limit to what humans could do or be.  

Emerson’s essay lauded man’s excellence, and lamented his mediocrity. At about 10,000 words, it’s groundbreaking in ambition and sweep.

His prologue is the epilogue to a poem by English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. By quoting the poem, Emerson’s saying that as long as “man is his own star,” he’ll be fine.

Emerson argues that once man has grounded himself in God (he uses the word “God” nearly two dozen times) his conscience, not those of others, is his compass. Self-discovery and self-reliance build competence, confidence, resilience, and originality; this happens only if founded on integrity and humility, not on false pride and hypocrisy. Conforming to what others think is the antithesis of self-reliance, and akin to a game of “blindman’s-buff.”

Doesn’t great art, the author asks, resemble the slush pile of our ideas? Had we followed our intuitions, rather than rejected them because they were ours, we might be artists ourselves, not spectators. He asks that we reclaim our personal agency, see ourselves as “guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark,” and not imagine ourselves as helpless “minors and invalids.”   

Sacred Personhood

Nature has hardwired babies, boys, youth, and men to be bold and experimentative, to trust their instincts, and to take risks. To Emerson, a societally imposed and deluded sense of propriety and overwrought etiquette can pollute that early purity of intent, turning innovators into conformists. But if men stay sincere, they can’t go too far wrong. They err more when pandering to social badges, or titles that puff them up.

Be yourself, Emerson concedes, but not as an excuse to never contradict yourself or others. This is especially true if good sense requires new a belief or behavior, or if reality demands it. Being yourself isn’t license to stay yourself, but to find yourself anew each day, by dying to old, destructive habits, and being born to new, redemptive ones.

Words and actions are of a lower order than thoughts from where vice and virtue spring. Emerson exalts thought and personhood to the level of the sacred. He prefers judging men by life principles, not what they did one tempestuous evening eight years ago: “The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.”

Truth is ultimately its own defense. Emerson likens slavish submission to societal expectations to aping one’s shadow. So what if you’re misunderstood? All great men are. At one level, a blind, conforming consistency stifles conviction. This can, and should, change, based on life’s lessons.

At another level, consistency—the “cumulative” force of character—is what matters. The author compares this to a ship’s direction which defines its trajectory, not its “zigzag” path along the water. Emerson denounces performative tokenism that sacrifices private conviction at the altar of public opinion. He characterizes it as “My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”

"Clipper Ship Golden West, Outward Bound," 1852, by William Bradford. Emerson suggests that a person stay on course, like a ship that zigzags over the waves but maintains the same heading. Public Domain

Taking Responsibility

Groupism, Emerson warns, can pose as goodness. One shouldn’t simply submit to what is said to be good, but speak a “rude truth” that asks “if it be goodness.” Bigots pretend to agree with what is said to be good. But they consider being true to their own is better than “affectation” of love for other peoples; it’s better than “tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off.” That’s hypocrisy—“Thy love afar is spite at home.”

Emerson hints at philanthropy and pride in one’s national, ethnic, or racial heritage. He says, “Your goodness must have some edge to it—else it is none.” He’s asking to handpick the charities to support, then do it wholeheartedly. He’s not damning other nations, races, or “popular charities.” But individuals must choose causes, not be shoehorned into championing a so-called common good. He champions personal responsibility, including owning up to success and failure.

This is the inverse of a coddling victimhood that rewards and punishes one race or sex for centuries-old sins of individuals. Individuals must be accountable, but for themselves, not on behalf of others. Corralling masses into oppressed and oppressor to serve tidy social justice reparations is lazy. It’s also wrong.

On victimhood, Emerson’s on fire; a “sturdy lad from New Hampshire” shaping his destiny is better than pampered “city dolls” who excuse their own failures.

Emerson’s essay also speaks to techno-authoritarianism. Contemporaries of his, the Luddites, weren’t, as is widely believed, against technology, but against its mindless use. Like Emerson, they were proud and protective of man’s empathy, critical thinking, and ethical intelligence. To outsource that was to surrender a critical part of humanity. The author ends with a call to action against transactional religion, trivial travel, and education that prizes imitation. He’s in favor of rigorous physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual self-improvement.

Self-Reliance in Context 

Social media’s tokenistic endorsement or ostracism, mimics monarchic relics such as knighthood. The difference? Honors that should be rare are now commonplace. Emerson abhors such mediocrity. But if he’s right to say that pretended or paraded excellence shouldn’t trump excellence itself, he’s wrong to rebuke all forms of recognition. Without recognition as he rose to intellectual stardom, Emerson might have stopped writing altogether.

Emerson writes that it’s “godlike” for man to “trust himself” and be “doctrine, society, law, to himself.” That’s mistaken. Emerson believes man’s body and mind can make him godlike, and Big Tech believes that man’s technology can make him so. But man’s inventiveness means that his work isn’t perfect and reminds him that he isn’t God. His innovations tell him just that, if only he’d listen.

If an innovator doesn’t listen, the Patent Office will tell him when what he’s filed as “new” is actually adaptation, not invention, because someone invented it before he did. Or he’d think his ideas are revolutionary, not recycled.

“Trust thyself,” Emerson writes. That’s a fine principle, but it can’t be an ironclad law. Humans are as capable of delusion as they are of genius. Self-deception can be suicidal; fantasies about flying don’t make flight a reality any more than Icarus’s wings made him a bird. True, dreams of a moon landing propelled man to fulfill it. But if every dream can become reality, then even divinity isn’t a stretch. The temptation to believe that man can be God becomes too strong to resist.

Emerson boasts, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” Individuals must decide, based on instinct or intuition, what’s good or bad, right or wrong, lawful or unlawful.  

“The Fall of Icarus,” 1635, by Jacob Peeter Gowy after Peter Paul Rubens. Prado, Madrid. Public Domain

Tradition Matters

Emerson is correct that many sciences, religions, and belief systems sprang from the mind of one person. But he forgets that, if one person starts things, someone else finishes it, and another person reinforces and refines it for adoption on a newer, wider plane. If all march only to the beat of their own drum, there’d be no traditions drawing on the wisdom of the wisest.

The tradition of the family is the most articulate rebuttal to Emerson’s summons for man to live off, with, and for himself; family requires man to rise above himself. If everyone followed only instinct, self-preservation would rule. But there are those whose wills are ordered to goodness, routinely defy instinct, and even die for those they love.

Emerson romanticizes independence to a point that borders on condemning healthy, even essential, interdependence: “Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself.” Human nature is unique in the absolute dependence at young and old ages, and relative interdependence in between. Emerson’s “God is here within” isn’t a truth he intuited. It was handed down. 

Sweepingly, Emerson spurns “bards and sages.” Yes, man must follow his compass, but a compass needs context; it must respect the poles. Earth’s magnetic field doesn’t unfailingly match its north-south axis, but it’s close enough. Wise folk may not have a prerogative over absolute truth, but they point to it. Not all knowledge needs to be first-hand. If it flows from truth, there’s no shame in accepting derived knowledge.

A compass binnacle in front of the ship's wheel. Ian Petticrew/CC BY-SA 2.0

Immense Intelligence

Thankfully, Emerson redeems himself when he admits: “We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams.

Emerson writes that great men discarded tradition and spoke what they, not others, thought. But Moses echoed God’s thoughts. Plato perhaps learned as much from his teacher Socrates as from his probing pupil Aristotle. And John Milton developed his critical thinking from mentor Thomas Young. The greatest, even Emerson, learned from others before they taught.

Engraving of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1878, by S.A. Schoff, from an original drawing by Sam W. Rowse. Public Domain

Nearly a decade after “Self-Reliance,” a chastened Emerson published what might have been the beginning of a rethink. In “Representative Men” (1849) he draws lessons from Plato and the like, proving more respectful of other traditions and truths as a 46-year-old than his 38-year-old self.

Nearly two decades after “Self-Reliance,” a more subdued Emerson published “The Conduct of Life” (1860). In this treatise, he fleshes out human imperfections, which he’d glossed over in his youthful 1841 essay.

Age and youth are bound to question each other’s certainties.  If they question wisely, the old and young see, hear, and understand anew, not just differently.

To do him justice, read Emerson’s later essays, too. You’ll see how great men change their positions, rather than cling to one because it’s theirs. Seen thus, “Self-Reliance,” is one of many zig-zags in Emerson’s voyage of self-discovery, an invigorating hot take rather than the final word. Still, as hot takes go, it’s a daringly demanding vision of humanity.

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