Abstract

John Dewey professed at the first centennial of Emerson’s birth that “the coming century may well make evident what is just now dawning, that Emerson is not only a philosopher, but that he is the Philosopher of Democracy.” I hope that this paper will contribute to further demonstrating the force and potential of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thinking for philosophy of education. While recent Emerson scholarship has started to open up for social and political readings also of Emerson’s work, the reception of this new Emersonianism has been relatively sparse within philosophy of education. Drawing chiefly on Stanley Cavell’s reading, I argue that it can be shown that, when taken seriously as a philosophical writer, Emerson´s writing proposes an understanding of self and society which undermines any bipolar opposition of the two concepts as early as in “Self-Reliance,” and that, if there is to be hope for the individual self, then, for Emerson, there always has to be hope for a democratic society as well. The paper will conclude by considering the consequences of this reading of “Self-Reliance” for understanding Emerson’s American appropriation of the concept of Bildung, adjusting some arguments recently put forth in scholarship, also regarding his influence on American pragmatism.