Emerson's transcendental etudes

Stanford University Press

2003

xii, 277 p.

Cultural memory in the present

Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-[270]) and index

9780804745420

Thinking of Emerson -- An Emerson mood -- The philosopher in American life (toward Thoreau and Emerson) -- Emerson, Coleridge, and Kant (terms as conditions) -- Being odd, getting even (Descartes, Emerson, Poe) -- Finding as founding : taking steps in Emerson's "experience" -- Staying the course -- Aversive thinking : Emersonian representations in Heidegger and Nietzsche -- Epilogue -- Hope against hope -- A cover letter -- What is the Emersonian event? A comment on Kateb's Emerson -- Emerson's constitutional amending : reading "fate" -- What's the use of calling Emerson a pragmatist? -- Henry James reading Emerson reading Shakespeare -- Old and new in Emerson and Nietzsche

This book is Stanley Cavell's definitive expression on Emerson. Over the past thirty years, Cavell has demonstrated that he is the most emphatic and provocative philosophical critic of Emerson that America has yet known. The sustained effort of that labor is drawn together here for the first time into a single volume, which also contains two previously unpublished essays and an introduction by Cavell that reflects on this book and the history of its emergence. Students and scholars working in philosophy, literature, American studies, history, film studies, and political theory can now more easily access Cavell's luminous and enduring work on Emerson. Such engagement should be further complemented by extensive indices and annotations. If we are still in doubt whether America has expressed itself philosophically, there is perhaps no better space for inquiry than reading Cavell reading Emerson

Английский