Ralph Waldo Emerson was his son and Waldo Emerson Forbes, his grandson.Asma Jahangir: The face of Pakistan's 'silent revolution' (in anthology Voices of Freedom from Asia and the Middle East), Beena Sarwar, Book ChapterĬhallenging Compliance: Activating Citizens for Change, Bethany Nelson, Book Chapter He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. 'The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.' (Civilization, 1862). 'The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature' (English Traits, 1856). 'I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship' (Self-Reliance). the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons' (Conduct of Life, 1860). He demolished the right wing hypocrites of his era in his essay 'Worship': '. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain' (Address to Harvard Divinity College, July 15, 1838). 'The word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression it is a monster. 'The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being' (Journal, 1836).

The best of Emerson's rather wordy writing survives as epigrams, such as the famous: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.' Other one- (and two-) liners include: 'As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect' (Self-Reliance, 1841). Margaret Fuller became one of his 'disciples,' as did Henry David Thoreau. (1841, 1844), Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849), and three volumes of poetry. His books include Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837), Divinity School Address (1838), Essays, 2 vol. He rejected traditional ideas of deity in favor of an 'Over-Soul' or 'Form of Good,' ideas which were considered highly heretical. Emerson inspired Transcendentalism, although never adopting the label himself. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a life as poet, writer and lecturer. During a year-long trip to Europe, Emerson became acquainted with such intelligentsia as British writer Thomas Carlyle, and poets Wordsworth and Coleridge. (Quoted in 2,000 Years of Freethought edited by Jim Haught.) By 1832, after the untimely death of his first wife, Emerson cut loose from Unitarianism. 'Really, it is beyond my comprehension,' Emerson once said, when asked by a seminary professor whether he believed in God.

The congregation, with Christian overtones, issued communion, something Emerson refused to do. Educated at Harvard and the Cambridge Divinity School, he became a Unitarian minister in 1826 at the Second Church Unitarian. He returned to the United States in 1833, to a lif in 1803, Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston.

In 1803, Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston.

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