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Page 1 Emerson‟s Essay “Experience”

A PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARY ON EMERSON’S ESSAY “EXPERIENCE”

by Rexford Styzens, August 2008

ABSTRACT

Traditional views of Ralph Waldo Emerson as a 19th Century Romantic ignore later

developments in his ideas. The essay “Experience” focuses this thesis. The resourcesthat comment on Emerson‟s work here all admire its philosophical acumen. Americancritics at the time rejected his reliance on German idealism, accusing it and him ofsolipsism. Immanuel Kant‟s appeal to formal logic decisively refuted the charge. Indefense of Emerson, this thesis argues that his later ideas conform to a sound view ofthe whole of things, as conceptualized now by philosopher P. F. Strawson, so thatEmerson also offered an objective referent.

The cited sources agree that Kant‟s Critique of Pure Reason provides a foundation forEmerson‟s ideas. They differ over whether his additions to Kant are warranted. StanleyCavell argues that Emerson resolved Kant‟s phenomenal/noumenal split, and Lee RustBrown agrees. Cavell identifies Emerson‟s contribution as a philosophy of mood. Brown

explores the dynamics of biographical epistemology. David Van Leer does not agree.Van Leer admires Emerson‟s respect for Kant‟s dilemmas and adherence to them. IsKant‟s duality also Emerson‟s? Yes and no.

PREFACE

Comments from four different books1 and a recent philosophical paper provide the

primary resources for this thesis on Emerson‟s essay “Experience.”

Conventional approaches to Ralph Waldo Emerson treat his most contemplative essays

as expressions of religious mysticism. That may be the reason the first citation in the body of

this thesis denies Emerson a credible comparison with Kant. It will be shown that the authorsof the primary commentaries used here do not agree that Emerson abuses Kant‟s system.

David Van Leer‟s careful textual analysis of Emerson‟s major philosophical essays

concludes that Emerson preserves his philosophical integrity by confirming Kant‟s two worlds‟

division of phenomenal and noumenal and thus remains under Kant‟s influence. Accordingly,

Emerson‟s uncertainty of coherent knowledge about nature‟s world and people extends such

uncertainty even to claims of knowledge about oneself.2 Van Leer comments,

In absolute terms, the noumenal ruins relative existence: there is no continuity between

the evidence for self-belief and the assumption that experience is grounded.3

So Van Leer equates Emerson‟s self -concept with Kant‟s insistence that it is noumenal. Self is

an indemonstrable linguistic convenience unavailable to evidential claims .

Emerson did not write systematic philosophy, all the commentators make clear. While

his philosophical ideas were based on a thorough respect for Kant‟s work, arguments can be

proposed, as do Cavell and Brown, that Emerson adds original insights. Since he wrote some

150 years ago, during which time philosophical work that takes empiricism seriously continued


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to flourish, the question now is whether any such work done today might help Emerson to

move beyond what seems to be, as Van Leer indicates, the corner into which he, with Kant‟s

help, painted himself.

Stanley Cavell suggests that Emerson carried Kant‟s ideas into new and legitimate

territory. In his analysis of “Experience,” Cavell employs the later essay by Emerson, “Fate,” to

clarify his progressive links to Kant. A quote from Cavell about an issue of general interest in

Emerson‟s work illustrates this thesis‟ goal: to understand what Cavell may mean when he

writes,

(T)he argument of the essay on Fate, I might summarize as the overcoming of Kant‟stwo worlds by diagnosing them, or resolving them, as perspectives, as a function of whatEmerson calls “polarity.”4

Lee Rust Brown‟s book explores Emerson‟s interest in the empirical science of his day.

That perspective amplifies Cavell‟s comments on “Experience,” as Brown‟s insights are

coherent with Cavell. Material from P. F. Strawson, in the “Introduction” ahead, offers a

philosophical evaluation of some of the critical concepts Kant uses. Strawson‟s analysis of

“condition” provides a foundation for the discussion that follows.

All the comments on “Experience” agree that Emerson‟s essay divides roughly into

seven segments that, although not subtitled as such, conform to Emerson‟s list of the seven

subjects he enumerates.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness,—these

are threads on the loom of time, these are the lords of life.5

That organizes this discussion into chapters corresponding to Emerson‟s segments.

Familiarity with “Experience” aids but is not required to understand these comments. They are

grouped into five arguments, with additional materials to begin and end, and “Succession,

Surface, Surprise” combined in a single chapter.

“Introduction”: In order to establish Emerson as a thorough-going but dissatisfied

Kantian, Strawson‟s analysis of Kant‟s use of the concept “condition” can be understood by

noticing the way discovery always contributes to or conditions the succeeding stages of

ongoing inquiry. Strawson then explores the way “formal concepts” extend knowledge but only

so long as the possibility of empirical confirmation is retained. Stanley Cavell elaborates

condition in terms of “dictation” as employed in Emerson‟s essays. Emerson‟s positive regard

for doubt allows Brown to relate empiricism to belief and an affirmation of holism, consistent

with Strawson‟s requirements.

“Experience as Illusion”: Emerson relies on Kant‟s analysis of the elusiveness of

knowledge. Emerson praises skepticism as a beneficial tool to evaluate perceptions. He


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illustrates that with tales from ordinary life, epigrammatically summarized as: nature hides.

Brown distinguishes epistemological doubt in Kant from biographical doubt in Emerson. The

cheerful optimism that critics have dismissed as evidence of a lack of seriousness is

philosophical rather than rhetorical. According to Brown, Emerson makes doubt an ally that

returns hope for the future by providing a pathway to lucidity.

“Experience as Temperament”: Cavell announces Emerson as a philosopher of mood.

Comments from Cavell, Brown, and Van Leer, as well as comparable dimensions of mood

from existential psychologist Eugene T. Gendlin and Paul Ricoeur‟s translator, Erazim Kohak,

then introduce a recent paper by philosopher April Flakne that critiques the topic of intuition.

Emerson may be read as a Romantic intuitionist, and evidence for that is ample. But his best

philosophical work, built on the foundations of Kantian epistemology, is consistent with a

contemporary exposition of self-concept that Flakne finds in Merleau-Ponty‟s later work.

“Experience as Reality”: Emerson is no match for the dilemmas of change and what

does not change. If he had the benefit of the work of Donald Davidson on “anomalous

monism,” he might have accepted his dilemma as an inevitable predicament of serious

thought.

“Experience as Subjectiveness”: Here Emerson‟s struggle with the topics of subject,

object, self, other, and world are framed by Strawson‟s analysis. Strawson‟s suggestions for a

concept of the whole of things are outlined, which he describes as in harmony with Kant‟s

Critique but not a conceptuality that Kant examined.

“Experience as Succession, Surface, Surprise”: This section, taken from the middle of

the essay, finally receives consideration. Here Emerson‟s relation to Kant becomes readily

evident. The three themes are grouped into a discussion of time, space, and Strawson‟s

notion of valid formal concepts for empiricism that can be applied to Emerson‟s examples of

moods. Emerson brings the formal concepts down to earth.

“Conclusions and Suggestions for Further Study”: The focus falls on the

conceptualizations introduced by the Flakne paper; those confirm Cavell‟s analysis of Emersonas a philosopher of mood. In addition, brief mention is given to a few areas of further study

that are emerging in the growing philosophical commentaries on Emerson.

Finally the alternate reading of “Experience” offered by David Van Leer is examined

briefly as a contrast with the Cavell/Brown hypotheses about Emerson‟s relation to Kant. This

thesis does not ascribe preferences either to the Cavell/Brown reading or the Van Leer


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reading. Instead it concludes that rethinking Emerson‟s work offers the opportunity to locate

him as understood best in a context of post-Romantic philosophical developments.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. 1

CHAPTER

PREFACE..................................................................................................... 1

1. INTRODUCTION: CONDITIONS OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ............... 7

Str awson Compares Kant‟s Conditions and Formal Concepts .......... 8

Sensible Intuition and Intellectual Intuition ......................................... 13Cavell on Emerson‟s Empiricism: Language Conditions Empirical

Experience .............................................................................. 13Dictation Enacts Condition ...................................................... 16

Doubt Generates a Mutuality of Skepticism and Belief ...................... 17

2. EXPERIENCE AS ILLUSION ................................................................... 21

3. EXPERIENCE AS TEMPERAMENT ........................................................ 28

Other Views of Temperament and Mood ........................................... 30 Mood as a Topic of Philosophy ............................................... 32

Erazim Kohak on Paul Ricoeur ............................................... 34 What or Who Is a Self? ...................................................................... 34

Problem of Memory as the Touchstone of Self-Identity ........... 35 Merleau-Ponty and Chiasm ..................................................... 36 Prospects for Ethics ................................................................ 39

4. EXPERIENCE AS REALITY ..................................................................... 43

Emerson‟s Principle of Compensation ............................................... 48

5. EXPERIENCE AS SUBJECTIVENESS .................................................... 51

Self-Object as Self-Subject as Self-Subject/Object ............................ 53 On the Whole of Things ..................................................................... 56

Strawson‟s Summary of Kant‟s “Dialectic” ......................... .... 57 Reason‟s Illusions—The Unconditioned ............................................ 58

A Series— As Either a Collection or Aggregate—Is Not a Whole 59 Author of Nature ...................................................................... 61 A Framework of Substance ..................................................... 62

Strawson‟s Alternative Analysis of the Noumenal .............................. 63


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CHAPTER Page

6. EXPERIENCE AS SUCCESSION, SURFACE, SURPRISE ..................... 66

Two Worlds of Phenomena and Noumena ........................................ 66 Universal Hindrance ................................................................ 69

Epistemology ..................................................................................... 70

Belief/Doubt as a Polarity ........................................................ 71 Surprise ............................................................................................. 72

7. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY ............ 74

Mood as a Sensible Intuition .............................................................. 77 Emerson‟s Claim to be Taken Literally............................................... 77 Consequences for Transcendentalism............................................... 79

Additional Questions .......................................................................... 80

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... 82


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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: CONDITIONS OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE6

Emerson published his first book of essays nearly a half century after Immanuel Kant

died. Subsequently Emerson became recognized as the founder and leading member of the

American school of philosophy named “Transcendentalism.” Emerson‟s reputation as a

thinker has been overshadowed by his achievements as a rhetorician, both writer and speaker,

such that one comparison of Emerson‟s work with Kant concludes,

transcendentalism. Associated especially with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his

followers, who have been called transcendentalists. (The name was erroneously appliedto them because of an incorrectly supposed relationship to Kant‟s philosophy.) 7

The prevailing view among philosophers has been that Emerson is a light-weight thinker, who

may be a cheerleader for scholarship but not himself a philosopher. So the attribution quoted

can be reasonably interpreted as intended to be a dismissal.

This thesis concludes, to the contrary, that Emerson‟s view of human experience does

not ignore the achievements of Kant‟s Critiques, as will be examined by a careful reading of his

essay “Experience.” Emerson remains a Kantian, but one dissatisfied with the pursuit of a

priori certainty. While Kant‟s reply to skepticism provides a useful baseline for inquiry, still

something is missing when the commonplace of human doubt is not also given the same

deliberate examination as Kant‟s affirmation of transcendental idealism. This thesis follows the

suggestion of Lee Rust Brown8 that the beliefs Kant locates in the “noumenal” Emerson finds

already at work in the freedom of honest human doubt.

For the comparison with Kant, it is necessary first to recite some of the dimensions of

the philosophical requirements set forth in Peter F. Strawson‟s reading of the Critique of Pure

Reason. After that, the primary goal will be to test Stanley Cavell‟s contention that Emerson

can be understood as a descriptive philosopher of mood. In this “Introduction,” Emerson‟s

essay “Experience”—as interpreted by Lee Rust Brown and Cavell (along with Cavell‟s

comments on the later Emerson essay “Fate”9)—will be compared with Strawson‟s

suggestions (and others) for what works and what does not work in Kant. The examination

intends to show that Emerson‟s view of the nature of experience approaches coherence with

what Strawson projects as valid extensions of Kant‟s conditions for empirical experience.


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Strawson Compares Kant‟s Conditions and Formal Concepts

In a study of Kant‟s first Critique, Strawson enumerates what he has found to be

strengths and weaknesses of that work. He then outlines what he believes to be a more

adequate approach to overcome those problems. He sketches a direction that is both

respectful and appreciative of Kant‟s contribution but pursues several paths that fol low some

developments since Kant and that offer worthwhile advances supporting what ought to be

preserved of Kant‟s efforts.

As a guide, Strawson proposes what he refers to as “the principle of significance.” The

permissible use of “concepts in judgements involves (. . . ) their possible application to

objects—ultimately to objects not themselves concepts.” That, in turn, needs “the general

conditions of our becoming aware of objects, i.e. involve our modes of intuition.” That

combination exemplifies Kant‟s famous dictum: “Intuitions without concepts are blind;

concepts without intuitions are empty.”10

“Intuition” Kant makes clear “is sensible and spatio-temporal.” Space and time provide

the necessary conditions for our experience of objects. Kant‟s point is that, were we to

separate concepts from those conditions, the concepts become useless for knowledge of

objects. Strawson draws the reader‟s attention at this point by calling that cluster of ideas a

“truth” and pointing out that Kant‟s “pure concepts of understanding,” the categories, are

similarly conditioned by space and time even as they supply to experience “that unity without

which the objective reference of experience would be impossible.”11

The valid knowledge that is Kant‟s central focus depends on the a priori categories and

conditions, which are fundamental criteria that obey the rules of logic and are not themselves

knowledge.

Kant‟s argument proceeds by explaining how it is not only easy but almost necessary

for us to get lost in misleading illusions, a theme as we shall see with which Emerson begins

the essay “Experience.” The categories, because of their inclusive application and abstract

universality, “extend further than sensible intuition,” insofar as they “think objects in general.” The temptation, then, is to suppose that such foundational categories allow us to draw “valid

conclusions about objects as they are in themselves.” If the categories are reified that way, it

is then but a small jump to the conclusion that our ability to use such purported universals

indicates, in a useful way, that they cogently describe entities and the properties of entities.

That mistake can be avoided only by remembering that the significant use of concepts requires

the simultaneous observance of the conditions of awareness, primarily space and time, of all


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objects to which they refer. To neglect the categories‟ dependence on space and time opens

the door to erroneous assumptions that can pose as an awareness of things as they are in

themselves.

Kant names the practice of talking about “a kind of awareness in which sensibility

played no part, in which understanding gave itself its own object.” Kant‟s “noumenon” applies

in a negative sense to “objects of such a purely intellectual intuition.” It provides no features to

show what we might mean when we talk in such fashion. Noumena have no empirical

referents, and hence are called “purely intellectual” intuition. That, according to Kant‟s famous

dictum, renders such concepts “empty.” The categories, even as the concepts of our

understanding, are empty until they receive, “through sensibility,” a material application. Only

when they are confirmed by judgments of sensible intuition can we “know” them. The two

requirements for the principle of significance (concepts plus objects) differ from the categories

in that, for the categories, “their meaning is not restricted by sensible intuition”; their form is

that of rules.

Material objects affect our sensibility. Although we can be aware of entities by being

affected, “we continue to know nothing (of entities) as they are in themselves.” While we may

think about and talk about „ineffable‟ objects using the terms of the categories, “we can have

no knowledge of supersensible objects.” The distinction between objects and concepts allows

Kant also to make clear that “knowledge of purely intelligible objects (. . . ) a non -sensible,

purely intellectual intuition” is beyond the realm of possibility. Strawson notes, wryly, that it

remains to be considered whether the best description for what Kant gives us here is an

example of “impossibility.” Strawson inquires, “Can the words mean anything but that the

objects of such an intuition would both have to have, and have not to have, the abstract

character which belongs to general concepts or to such abstract individuals as numbers?” He

suggests that perhaps the Kantian dilemma might profit from a more full and complete

invitation to the further possibilities of knowledge.

Strawson discusses a set of concepts, which he names “formal concepts,” whosefeatures can be considered analogous to Kant‟s “pure categories.” Bear in mind that it is

generally accepted that whenever Kant refers to anything as “pure” he is operating in the realm

of metaphysical transcendent—not transcendental—idealism. Strawson mentions as formal

concepts “identity, existence, class and class-membership, property, relation, individual, unity,

totality.” On the basis of formal logic, alone, general deductive connections can be assumed

for those formal concepts. In turn “such concepts are also applied or exemplified in empirical


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propositions which do not belong to logic.” Those instead assume “the existence of empirical

criteria” used to determine whether they are employed correctly with “other , non-formal,

empirical concepts.” One determinable feature of such conditions is that we have no way to

tell in advance of the actual conditions that apply or exemplify “formal concepts in non-logical

statements”—that is, what the actual limits might be that permit the legitimate use of those

non-formal concepts. When we have no idea yet what conditions obtain, “we cannot impose

any limitations in advance.” Kant‟s “intuition” always needs to be correlated with actual, known

conditions. Such conditions for non-formal concepts, while “not limited in advance by the

scope of our actual knowledge and experience” are not thereby impossible or incapable of

realization.

Strawson compares those to the categories and finds similarities. His rationale for the

for mal concepts develops by analogy from the conditions of the categories. He assigns “the

parallel remark that their meaning [of the formal concepts as well] is not restricted by any

empirical criteria” used in application or exemplification.

Since the categories must only be used with “the conditions of sensible awareness of

objects,” Strawson cautions that formal concepts in non-logical assertions then require

articulating the concomitant empirical criteria that will be employed whenever associated with

another concept.

He insists that Kant‟s point about avoiding the mistaken belief in and consequent use of

“objects of a special kind of intellectual intuition” demands respect. He interprets that in a

slightly amended form and agrees to rule out the notion that the categories can allow us to

“cross those bounds and gain knowledge of non-sensible objects.”

So it is a matter of never appealing to the claims of the categories to try to justify a form

of non-sensible knowledge and, yet at the same time, not then determining, in advance, that

the real is co-extensive with and confined to our sensible limitations. At issue are two

unjustifiable a priori claims: one that expands knowledge beyond experience to what

transcends it and another that restricts reality only to what has, before now, actually beenexperienced.

Strawson makes clear that “allowing the concept of objective reality to extend beyond

the types of sensible experience which we enjoy,” which exceed the Kantian limitation, should

also be interpreted as his refusal of Kant‟s subsequent employment—as a fixed, final, and

complete schema—of the distinction between “objective reality as it is in itself, things as they


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are in themselves, and objective reality as we know it, things as we experience them.” He

summarizes that as,

In refusing to commit ourselves to the dogmatic position that, though we do not knoweverything, we know at least every kind of thing there is to know about every kind ofthing there really is, we do not have to deny that we know things of some kinds about

some kinds of things there really are.

12

To illustrate, Strawson compares the experience of a blind person and a sighted person

A blind person who would presume to deny color to an object he is able to feel or taste, for

instance, might well be accused of trying to talk about something he has no way of knowing —

color —because no way of experiencing through the senses. In a similar fashion then, it is

illegitimate for a sighted person to deny “the possibility that with a richer equipment of sense

organs13 they too might discover in objects properties of which, as things are, they can [as yet]

form no conception. Such a denial flies in the face of the human ability to learn as a constant

on-going process.” Strawson cites the parallel situation of the proposal in scientific theory-

making that allows a hypothesis to be confirmed or disconfirmed. He does insist, however,

that any proposal for an unknown “aspect of reality” must be connected systematically with

something that is already confirmed. That position, Strawson holds, does not contradict Kant‟s

admonition to avoid affirmation of things as they are in-themselves.

Then he contrasts the way in which the comparison of the formal concepts with the

categories reveals a difference. Kant‟s noumenal cannot be understood in terms of the

categories. However, by analogy, when formal concepts are substituted for the noumenal,rather than referring to some object of non-sensible intuition, they admit of “the possibility of

knowledge of new types of individual, property , and relation, new applications of the concept of

identity ,” so long as they are applied in a valid way.

Strawson abides by Kant‟s determined limitation for the noumenal, where Kant insists

that—while he does operate with one feature of his system allowing “a reality transcending

sensible experience altogether”—we must guard against taking a further step of populating

that as if it were a field of experience containing a whole set of related possibilities. Likewise

with the formal categories: no field of entities or even ideas can legitimately be represented

simply by analogy alone with what is known. The formal categories are just techniques for

talking about what we do not know and about which we have no operative conception.

Strawson admonishes us to recognize that Kant‟s claim for the noumenal has that “negative

character.” Talking about what we do know entitles us also to talk about what we do not know,

although not as knowledge per se.


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In other words, our personal history of experience and insight allows us to affirm that

both something more and something new remain possible at all times. But we must guard

against leaping into metaphysics via such affirmations of our necessary ignorance. Necessary

ignorance does not entail necessary knowledge. At this point, Strawson reconciles his radical

critique of Kant with his affirmation that Kant deserves his exalted place in the history of

philosophy and is much to be admired for the care and creativity he brought to his work.

Strawson‟s requirement for “the significant employment of concepts,” using his principle

of significance, is the general formulation, “they must be so employed as to have application in

a possible experience.” He expects that such would allow at least for “what we mean by

observational criteria,” based on our existing usage of such criteria and “types of observable

situations in which it has application.” He cautions that one ought not employ novel notions

simply to duplicate or re-describe what “other, established, non-problematic concepts” are able

to cover. He assures us that he intends to affirm the achievements of the scientific method.

Yet by considering the addition of possibilities that “extend or modify our classifications

and descriptions” in conformity with his strategies for formal concepts, we may be able “to

extend our knowledge of the world by learning to see it afresh.”

In the comparison of Emerson with Kant, to discover whether Emerson also practices

the same respect for the requirements of sensible intuition and avoidance of the presumption

of “objects of a purely intelligible and wholly non-sensible character,” the distinction that

Strawson points to will be referred to as the affirmation of possibilities. In no way does that

suggest that possibilities—when absent any experience whatsoever —deserve to be taken

seriously. In Strawson‟s words,

The application or exemplification of the formal concepts in empirical propositions turnson the existence of empirical criteria for the application of other, non-formal, empiricalconcepts, of, e.g., properties or kinds of individual. But we cannot specify in advancewhat empirical criteria are permissible in the application or exemplification of the formalconcepts in non-logical statements.

There must be conditions, directly or indirectly related to what Kant calls intuition (i.e.awareness of objects not themselves concepts) for any employment or exemplification ofthe formal concepts in non-logical statements. But those conditions are not limited in ad-vance by the scope of our actual knowledge and experience. 14

At the end of this paper, the discussion will return to Strawson‟s analysis of Kant‟s first

Critique for a brief examination of the notion of what will be called “the whole of things.” Kant

did not pursue that topic the way Strawson does. Yet it can be consistent with Kant‟s limits

and coherent with the natural sciences.


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Sensible Intuition and Intellectual Intuition15

Cavell attributes to Emerson a distinctly different usage of the term “intuition” than found

in Kant. Whereas Kant meant by “intuition” sensitivity to the objective or material world,

Emerson has borrowed the usage, comparable to Kant‟s notion of “faculty,” that developed in

Anglo-American Romanticism. Consequently, we dare not rely on the term “intuition” for

continuity between Kant and Emerson. Cavell warns us when he writes,

Our past solutions to these mysteries (“the old knots of fate, freedom, andforeknowledge”), however philosophical in aspect, are themselves mythology, or, as wemight more readily say today, products of our intuitions, and hence can progress nofurther until we have assessed which of our intuitions are satisfied, and which thwarted,by the various dramas of concepts or figures like fate, and freedom, and foreknowledge,and will.16

At the same time, Kant and Emerson rely on a duality that may or may not be similar. It will be

examined ahead under the topic of “Two Worlds of Phenomena and Noumena.”17

Cavell on Emerson‟s Empiricism: Language Conditions Empirical Experience

A better beginning for the Emerson/Kant comparison emerges from their references to

the concept of “condition.” Cavell uses Emerson‟s “Fate” to found the claim for viewing

Emerson as a philosopher. The examination there of the conditions of fate, freedom, and

foreknowledge rely on Kant‟s foundations but in order to include a wider array of experience.

It is as if in Emerson‟s writing (not in his alone, but in his first in America) Kant‟s pride inwhat he called his Copernican Revolution for philosophy, understanding the behavior ofthe world by understanding the behavior of our concepts of the world, is to beradicalized, so that not just twelve categories of the understanding are to be deduced,but every word in the language—not as a matter of psychological fact, but as a matter of,say, psychological necessity. Where Kant speaks of rules or laws brought to knowledgeof the world by Reason, a philosopher like Wittgenstein speaks of bringing to light ourcriteria, our agreements (sometimes they will seem conspiracies). Starting out inphilosophical life a quarter of a century ago, I claimed in “The Availability ofWittgenstein‟s Later Philosophy” that what Wittgenstein means by “grammar” in hisgrammatical investigations—as revealed by our system of ordinary language—is aninheritor of what Kant means by “Transcendental Logic”; that, more particularly, whenWittgenstein says, “Our investigation . . . is directed not towards phenomena but, as onemight say, towards the “possibilities‟ of phenomena” he is to be understood as citing theconcept of possibility as Kant does in saying, “The term „transcendental‟ . . . signifies

[only] such knowledge as concerns the a priori possibility of knowledge, or its a prioriemployment.” Here I am, still at it.18

Emerson‟s essay “Experience” receives most of the attention here, but Cavell employs

a later Emerson essay “Fate” to expose Emerson‟s philosophical framework in “Experience,”

located in the critical significance of “conditions.” After warning that Emerson‟s writing “is as

indirect and devious as, say, Thoreau‟s is, but more treacherous,” because more genteel,

Cavell writes,


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The essay “Fate” is especially useful here because of its pretty explicit association withKantian perplexities [of the phenomenal and noumenal worlds].19

Cavell characterizes Emerson‟s sense of “intellectual” intuition in the following fashion.

“Condition” is a key word of Emerson‟s “Fate,” as it is of the Critique of Pure Reason, asboth texts are centrally about limitation. In the Critique: “Concepts of objects in generalthus underlie all empirical knowledge as its a priori conditions.” I am taking it thatEmerson is turning the Critique upon itself and asking: What are the conditions inhuman thinking underlying the concept of condition, the sense that our existence is, soto speak, had on condition?

Whatever the conditions are in human thinking controlling the concept of condition, theywill be the conditions of “the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge,” immediatelybecause these words, like every other in the language, are knots of agreement (orconspiracy) which philosophy is to unravel, but more particularly because the idea ofcondition is internal to the idea of limitation, which is a principal expression of an intuitionEmerson finds knotted in the concept of Fate.20

Cavell‟s assertion that Emerson is turning the Critique upon itself appeals to the

distinction between one‟s having a condition and knowing the condition of such conditions by

giving an account:

In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knowshimself to be party to his present estate.21

Emerson does not resort to special information or talents. He shares Kant‟s interest in

skepticism but not Kant‟s distrust of it. Cavell‟s contention is that Emerson (as for Cavell)

respects skepticism that deserves to be taken seriously. He portrays Emerson‟s entitlement,

to claim philosophy, beginning in the nature of language not as foreknowledge but rather as

seducing us; language makes us “victims of meaning.”

Disagreements over such matters do not arise (as they do not arise in skepticism) fromone of us knowing facts another does not know, but, so Emerson is saying, from how itis one aligns the facts, facts any of us must have at our disposal, with ideas ofvictimization, together with whatever its opposites are. (One of Emerson‟s favoritewords for its opposite is Lordship.) Something you might call philosophy would consist intracing out the source of our sense of our lives as alien to us, for only then is there the

problem of Fate. This looks vaguely like the project to trace out the source of our senseof the world as independent of us, for only then is skepticism a problem.

Even someone willing to suspend disbelief this far might insist that Emerson‟s writingmaintains itself solely at the level of what I was calling mythology. So I must hope to

indicate the level at which I understand the onset of philosophy to take place.22

Now it says openly that language is our fate. It means, hence, that not exactlyprediction, but diction, is what puts us in bonds, that with each word we utter we emitstipulations, agreements we do not know and do not want to know we have entered,agreements we were always in, that were in effect before our participation in them. Ourrelation to our language—to the fact that we are subject to expression and comprehen-sion, victims of meaning—is accordingly a key to our sense of our distance from ourlives, of our sense of the alien, of ourselves as alien to ourselves, thus alienated.23


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Cavell asks if Emerson‟s claim for “one key, one so lution to the old allies of illusion, the

knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge” becomes philosophically respectable when used

“merely as a key,” in Pascal‟s sense that “it only opens, it does not further invite, or provide.”24

Cavell employs that distinction as evidence of the way our language exerts both the

need as well as a solace for the human adventure. At issue is human freedom. Kant

stipulates freedom as a regulative principle, an assumption we make for various subjective

reasons of convenience. Emerson, on the other hand, finds freedom to be both the gift and

the burden of self-reflection. (Some doubts about self-reflection qualify its ordinary claim to

self-evidence; those are examined in the “Conclusions” of this thesis). What Emerson adds to

the familiar modern appreciation of human freedom is that the struggle not only is between

polarities but between any particular set of polarities and the inescapable fact that every

resolution of that struggle must submit itself to the additional ongoing struggle with temporality

and finitude. As we shall see, both Cavell and Brown will argue that Emerson employs that

dynamic as evidence of and momentum toward the whole of things.

“Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.” (. . . ) Annul here, I feel sure,alludes to the Hegelian term for upending antitheses (aufheben), or what Emerson callsour polarity, our aptness to think in opposites, say in pitting together Fate and Freedom.

Annul also joins a circle of economic terms in Emerson‟s essay, for instance, interest,fortunes, balances, belongings, as well as terms and conditions themselves, and in itsconnection with legislation, in the idea of voiding a law, it relates to the theme of theessay that “We are as lawgivers.” The terms of our language are economic and politicalpowers. They are to be positioned in canceling the debts and convictions that are

imposed upon us by ourselves, and first by antagonizing our conditions of polarity, ofantagonism.25

In his comments on ”Fate,” Cavell illustrates that process of antagonizing antagonism

by connecting “dictation” and “condition” in order to position Emerson as what he then

characterizes as a philosopher of mood.

Dictation, like condition, has something to do with language—dictation with talking,especially with commanding or prescribing (which equally has to do with writing),condition with talking together, with the public, the objective. “Talking together” is whatthe word condition, or its derivation, says. Add to this that conditions are also terms,stipulations that define the nature and limits of an agreement, or the relations betweenparties, persons, or groups, and that the term term is another repetition in Emerson‟sessay. Then it sounds as though the irresistible dictation that constitutes Fate, that setsconditions on our knowledge and our conduct, is our language, every term we utter. Isthis sound attributable to chance? I mean is the weaving of language here captured by(the conditions, or criteria of) our concept of chance?26

Cavell will suggest, as does Emerson, that there is more to reality than chance alone

can account for. He amplifies the list of terms that participate in Emerson‟s category of

“dictation” from his familiarity with other essays by Emerson. It seems Emerson attempts to

extend the meaning of fate to a meeting place for empiricism and philosophy. Cavell finds it


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emerging in the usage of “dictation.” The problem of human freedom is also a problem of

human bondage, as freedom itself becomes a bond. Emerson‟s conception of voluntary

human behavior is understood not only as a struggle with the involuntary but as a struggle with

itself 27 thereby adding a dimension to traditional accounts of human fallibility.

His first way of expressing Fate is to speak of “irresistible dictation”—we do with our liveswhat some power dominating our lives knows or reveals them to be, enacting old scripts.The problem has famously arisen with respect to God, and with God‟s or nature‟s laws.Emerson adds the new science of statistics to the sources of our sense of subjection todictation, as if to read tables concerning tendencies of those like me in circumstanceslike mine—Emerson spoke of circumstances as “tyrannous”—were to read my future; asif the new science provides a new realization of the old idea that Fate is a book, a text,an idea Emerson repeatedly invokes. Then further expressions of the concept ofcondition are traced by the rest of the budget of ways Emerson hits off shades of ourintuition of Fate—for example as predetermination, providence, calculation,predisposition, fortune, laws of the world, necessity—and in the introductory poem to theessay he expresses it in notions of prevision, foresight, and omens.28

Dictation Enacts Condition

Cavell then explores what seem initially to be indecipherable aspects of Emerson by

referring to what his language shows us. Following Emerson‟s apparent contradiction of “the

promise and the refusal of freedom,” Cavell asks,

Then on what does a decision between them depend? I think this is bound up withanother question that must occur to Emerson‟s readers: Why, if what has been saidhere is getting at what Emerson is driving at, does he write that way?29

Cavell answers his own question with one of the most significant assertions in support of

Emerson:

That he shows himself undermining or undoing a dictation would clearly enough showthat his writing is meant to enact its subject , that it is a struggle against itself, hence oflanguage with itself, for its freedom. Thus is writing thinking, or abandonment.30

The power of words—not only to tell what they mean but to show what they mean—

raises questions of limits, staying within the acceptable limits of language. That issue is where

Emerson and Kant cross swords most significantly. Cavell does not deny that it is difficult to

justify Emerson as a philosopher, but one indication can be found in whether Emerson

coherently searches for ways to keep his language within acceptable philosophical limits or

whether he lets his language drift into the never-land of undiluted metaphysical speculation.

The youthful and the mature Emerson are distinguishable on those terms.

Emerson‟s earlier call, from “Self -Reliance,” “Society everywhere is in conspiracy

against the manhood of every one of its members,” is almost arrogant in its advocacy of

personal self-acceptance. Cavell finds a different appreciation of human limits in the more


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wistful admission of human contributory negligence, represented by, “This dictation

understands itself,” and “the essay [Fate] sets this understanding as our task.”

Emerson‟s initial claim on the subject (and it may as well be his final) is this: “But if therebe irresistible dictation, this dictation understands itself. If we must accept Fate, we arenot less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of

duty, the power of character.”

31

Cavell interprets that as a key to Emerson‟s conditions.

It emerges that in, so to speak, taking our place in the world we are joining theconspiracy, and we may join it to our harm or to our benefit. (. . . The) remark above allmeans that Fate is not a foreign bondage, human life is not invaded, either by chance orby necessities not of its own making.

One key to Emerson‟s “Fate” is the phrase “the mysteries of human condition.” I takethe hint from the awkwardness of the phrase. I assume, that is, that it is not an error for“the mysteries of the human condition,” as if Emerson were calling attention to mysteriesof something which itself has well-known attributes. (. . . )

The hint the phrase “the mysteries of human condition” calls attention to is that there isnothing Emerson will call the human condition, that there is something mysterious aboutcondition as such in human life, something which leads us back to the idea that “in thehistory of the individual is always an account of his condition,” and that this has to dowith his “[knowing] himself to be a party to his present estate.”

And he says: “A man‟s fortunes are the fruit of his character.” The genteel version ofthis familiarly runs, “Character is fate,” and it familiarly proposes anything from a tragic toa rueful acquiescence in our frailties.32

Doubt Generates a Mutuality of Skepticism and Belief 33

Cavell reads Emerson from the point of view of a philosopher. While Brown is familiar

with the current claims of philosophy, he analyzes Emerson from the perspective of the textual

interests of the literary critic. That focus becomes evident when Brown distinguishes

Emerson‟s skepticism from epistemological skepticism:

I have been looking at skepticism as a working feature of action and experience ratherthan as a set of doubts about what human beings can know. Epistemologicalskepticism, on the other hand, has concerned itself with the limits of our ability to gaincertain knowledge of the nature or even the existence of objects.34

So Brown holds for Emerson that,

Skeptical moments are biographical before they are epistemological. They befall us, as

moods do, in the course of our empirical passages and endeavors. As a matter ofcourse, they generate epistemological doubts of all sorts, but these doubts arise fromwithin the economics of endeavor rather than as consequences of some Pyrrhonistic orCartesian èpoche.35

Emerson raises epistemological doubts, Brown writes, only insofar as they may pertain to uses

and ends apart from epistemological uses and ends. It is more important for Emerson to ask

what we do with the answers we seek than to ask how answers are possible.

The answer to the question of the world‟s existence, and hence to the question ofwhether we can have certain knowledge of objects, makes no practical difference. At


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the same time, Emerson finds that a noble raising of the doubt makes a great deal ofdifference. Doubts, especially extreme doubts, work even better than knowledge inprovoking us to try out new experience.36

For Emerson the issue is not proof of certainty of knowledge, as it is for Kant, but the

relation of doubt to belief. As shall be examined more closely in the segment identified as

Reality37 in chapter 4 ahead, Brown‟s contention is that belief, for Emerson,

(. . . ) appears first as a quality of engagement, a practical orientation toward the future;only by implication does it raise issues of certain knowledge. As he points out in“Experience,” skepticism records a descent into fragmentary immediacy, whereas belieflooks forward to a prospect of the whole.38

As evidence of Emerson‟s empirical focus, doubt keeps his interests close to that of “the

evidence of the world at hand, which must ground our enterprise if only by the most chastening

contradictions.”39

This same proximity to common things reappears as an imperative in “The Poet,” where

Emerson says that “the poet names the thing because he sees it, or comes one stepnearer to it than any other” (CW 3:13). What he there calls “the ravishment of theintellect by coming nearer to the fact” is the other side to skepticism‟s contracted focus; itrequites our painful perceptions of limit with “the plain face and sufficing objects ofnature, the sun, and moon, and water, and stones.” (. . . S)uch common things maketheir own promises to the persistent eye, since they stand ready to furnish their partstoward a future whole: “Nothing walks, or creeps, or grows, or exists, which must not inturn arise and walk before him as exponent of his meaning.”40

Emerson further distinguishes “the skeptic from the mere programmatic doubter, whose

practice is no less dubious than that of the uncritical believer.”41

This, then, is the right ground of the skeptic, this of consideration, of selfcontaining, notat all of unbelief, not at all of universal denying, nor of universal doubting, doubting eventhat he doubts; least of all, of scoffing, and profligate jeering at all that is stable and good(. . . ).42

Every superior mind will pass through this domain of equilibration,—I should rather say,will know how to avail himself of the checks and balances in nature, as a natural weaponagainst the exaggeration and formalism of bigots and blockheads. (CW 4:90, 97)43

Emerson “prefers to speak of belief and skepticism in dynamic terms of compensation,

action and reaction, cause and effect, or, as in the passage just cited, „the checks and

balances of nature.‟” Emerson‟s ordinary world has the power to reveal “the common

resources of experience, which, Emerson insists, is also the place where belief finds its

beginnings. (. . . ) So skepticism and belief sustain one another by mutual provocation.”44

Skepticism recalls belief home to its source in perception by demanding that ourexpectations answer to the private yet common world of experience; but it is just assurely the case that what Emerson calls “the universal impulse to believe” (CW 3A2),which lies at the quick of both skepticism and revelation, will startle the skeptical eyewith irresistible prospects. Doubts and detections of limit are not merely criticisms ofestablished things, but fresh findings in nature. They are like the lusters in our readingor, for the naturalist, like those New World specimens that defied even the broadest ofstanding classifications. Without this freshness, without a perception so striking and so


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reliable that it outshines all prior persuasions, criticism can be nothing but censure,scoffing, or mechanical dissection.45

What rank does “belief” hold for Emerson? Brown writes that it assures us we can

believe “in our own ability to see the self -evident”; so that “the skeptic denies out of more faith,

not less, ultimately sharing resources with his antagonistic twin, the prophet.” 46 Contrary to

Descartes‟ skepticism, Emerson writes in “The Over -soul,”

We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that weare awake. (CW 2:166)47

Brown identifies a practical bond “between self -reliant skepticism and self-reliant belief”

in Emerson‟s openness to both. Then Brown introduces the concept of “anomaly.” Ahead

here in the analysis of the segment on Reality, chapter 4, a recent utilization of the concept

“anomaly” by Donald Davidson helps to explore Emerson‟s paradoxical dilemma between

nature‟s determinism and human freedom. Brown praises anomaly as a symptom or sign of

indicators of the whole of things.

Perception of anomaly, then, works as a kind of initial prophecy, the first outcropping of amore capacious prospect of the whole, which in turn prepares the field for futureskepticisms. As for the natural history of the process itself, Emerson can only call it, in“Experience,” “a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it hasnone” (CW 3:27).48

Objects compose reality, but we only understand them insofar as human appreciation is

also made evident and paired with the dynamics of the principle of significance. Brown notes,

it can be described as a combination of “both ecstatic and practical” where “belief and

skepticism meet before departing once again.”49

Power, Emerson says, “resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, inthe shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim” (CW 2:40). By the terms of thispassage, transitional momentum finds direction in the focal points of new objects,whether these appear as states, aims, or even things. Particular objects may beabandoned and exchanged, but they are never transcended in any categorical way. Infact, we grasp objects in their fullest nature only when we treat them as objectives foractions. Thus moments of power are both ecstatic and practical, combining the mostextreme transport with the most discriminating objectivity. Power “resides” (the wordsuggests crossing between sides and also remaking the sides—both the limits and thearrayed meanings—of a new situation) in the vertex where lines of belief and skepticismmeet before departing once again.50

Emerson locates what interests him in the practical ends that conclude “Experience”

with the declaration “the true romance which the world exists to r ealize will be the

transformation of genius into practical power.” That is only possible after confronting the

limitations of human perception.

Transforming our limited objects or objectives into terms of power happens not throughtranscending limits but in seizing limits and turning them into instruments. But first wemust squarely behold the limits by opening our eyes to near things. It is well worth the


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sense of loss in affirming the limits of life as our own, since they also suggest theprospect of regaining the world as a whole.51

Both belief and doubt bear upon the exercise of the will. Emerson saw the anomaly of human

freedom as a paradox of the expected and surprise, the connected and the disconnected,

drawing our attention to evidence of the whole when we pay attention.


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CHAPTER 2

EXPERIENCE AS ILLUSION52

THE lords of life, the lords of life,I saw them pass,In their own guise,Like and unlike,Portly and grim,Use and Surprise,Surface and Dream,Succession swift, and spectral Wrong,Temperament without a tongue,

And the inventor of the gameOmnipresent without name;— Some to see, some to be guessed,They marched from east to west:Little man, least of all,

Among the legs of his guardians tall,Walked about with puzzled look:— Him by the hand dear Nature took;Dearest Nature, strong and kind,Whispered, ‘Darling, never mind! Tomorrow they will wear another face,

The founder thou! these are thy race! ‟

Emerson announces the theme of illusion as the essay opens with a colorful description

of various human ineptitudes. He begins with what amounts to a comic page of human

bewilderment and foolishness. The tone set by the poetic prologue, with its characterization of

us, humans, as a “little man (. . . ) with puzzled look,” shapes the tone of what follows: we ar e

all in this together! From a patronizing pat on the head, bordering on the parental humoring of

a child, it concludes with the revelation that life‟s self -evident powers, whose momentum fills us

with awe, turn out to be our own creation (our “race”). How might that be? As we shall see,the essay answers that question—but not simply.

The representation of humanity as protagonist in the poem is towered over by a host of

“guardians tall,” the “lords of life.” Though pictured as guardians, clearly the poetic drama is

not about a struggle for survival. Instead, it is the safer but still serious predicament of finding

ourselves lost. Guidance finally comes from Nature who takes the wanderer to lead him by the

hand. It is “Dearest Nature, strong and kind,” as a friend, from whom we learn that those


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mighty laws of necessity enumerated in the preceding lines as use, surprise, surface, dream,

succession, wrong, and temperament, while they march deliberately, purposefully, unstoppably

“from east to west” are the “little man‟s” family and friends, the “race,” whom he has “founded.”

How so?

Emerson begins his prose with the question: “Where do we find ourselves?” So before

he gets to the discussion of what he will later tells us is the subject of the theme in this first

segment, Illusion, he immerses the reader in some of the consequences he associates with

skepticism.

Emerson describes our confusion over reality to be provoked by our inadequate,

dreamy aptitude for perceiving reality.

(T)he critical conditions of the common world stand at odds with reality, which isnonetheless their foundation and only significant object. Time and experience tempt

Emerson to bow to the distance itself, and to grow weary in the endless series of lessonsaffirming it. He addresses this weariness in “Experience,” when he admits that “sleeplingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception.”(CW 3:27) “Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion.” (CW 3:30)53

Where are we? Emerson answers with images first of being on a staircase, neither of

whose ends we can see. At birth, we pass through a door but only by paying the price of

ingesting “lethe,” as in the classic tales, where that is given as the reason none can remember

anything of a prior existence. The narcotic, however, is not life threatening. Only “our

perception” suffers. Then follows an elaboration of other symptoms of human foolishness, seen as a lack of

purpose and direction. The result is “we lack the affirmative principle. (. . . )If any of us knew

what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know!” In other

words, we cannot think straight, because we do not know what we are doing and where we are

headed.54 Instead we find ourselves surprised when something good happens. We cannot

even give an account of the fact that, believe it or not, we do seem to be able to accomplish

things, despite our bewilderments. Emerson summarizes that with, “‟Tis the trick of nature

thus to degrade to-day; a good deal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped magically in.”

If we try to give an account of ourselves, we can barely identify the date, time, and place

where the effort was achieved. Even as supreme an act as martyrdom, at the time it is

“suffered (. . . ) looked mean.” Our location receives little regard; the grass is always greener

elsewhere. We compare what we have with others, as Emerson puts it more liltingly:

“Yonder…rich pasturage, and my neighbor has fertile meadow.” But my own land “only holds

the world together.”


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The same comedy plays out in our ideas. When I quote others as authoritative, they

likely are quoting me similarly to their acquaintances. All of us lack appreciation of the worth of

what we say. Further, it is not only we, average and everyday folk, but the renowned literati

whose example confirms the case that

(T)he pith of each man‟s genius contracts itself to a very few hours. The history ofliterature—take the net result of Tiraboschi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of very fewideas and of very few original tales; all the rest being variation of these. So in this greatsociety wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions.It is almost all custom and gross sense. There are even few opinions, and these seemorganic in the speakers, and do not disturb the universal necessity.55

Emerson‟s theme of sleep recurs insofar as even a wakeful state seems still a kind of

sleep. We stumble through life like drunkards who cannot put one foot in front of the next. As

stumblebums—who are perfectly healthy but just cannot stop wandering, and whose energy

levels, we complain, are minimal—we do not know what we are doing or where we are going.

Emerson accounts that to, “we lack the affirmative principle, and (. . . ) have no superfluity of

spirit for new creation.”

That threat, not to life but to our perception, so distorts our senses that we cannot even

tell “whether we are busy or idle.” It is not that we do not get anywhere. Somehow things get

done. But we are surprised to see it when it happens, especially when it is “wisdom, poetry,

virtue.” We denigrate ourselves and the daily routine, disparaging our own; what someone

else says, we think important.

Everything around us offers a means by which we can orient ourselves. Yet disasters

happen, and when they come, even then,

There is at last no rough rasping friction, but the most slippery sliding surfaces. 56

(. . . )I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through ourfingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.57

Confinement to surfaces includes human contact as well, where “Our relations to each

other are oblique and casual.” We are disappointed whenever we look for reliability. In our

households we ask continually after news of what is happening elsewhere. Yet as we all

know, “it is not half so bad with them as they say.”

Even death and grief are unconvincing of their reality. We try to comfort ourselves that,

because all must die, we will at last contact a “reality that will not dodge us.” Emerson shares

his experience of grieving over the death of his first and, at the time, only son to emphasize

how difficult it is for human beings to probe below the surface of things, a theme he will

examine more specifically in later essays. What eludes us is “real nature.”


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Both nature and human nature hide from us when all are reduced to objects. The

distance, the lack of direct connection, “this evanescence and lubricity of all objects,” is “the

most unhandsome part of our condition.” Most obvious is when we try to overcome it and

instead “let them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest.”

Emerson reveals his familiarity with classical culture throughout this essay. The sayings

of Heraclitus appear or are paraphrased in several places. In this segment, we read, “Nature

does not like to be observed.” Thank you, Heraclitus. Emerson agrees, “Few adult persons

can see nature.”58 What does that mean?

Emerson‟s ridicule of human limitations prepares readers for his praise and respect for

what is had only on condition. Wonder wears a comic mask.

The desire that Emerson expresses in regard to reality, the desire to close the distancebetween himself and it, (. . . ) he often represents it in terms of manual grasping or

holding. In Nature he finds himself unable to “clutch” the world‟s beauty, which he canonly witness from behind “the windows of diligence.” “The American Scholar” suggestsa tactile, almost parental enfolding in its demand that we “embrace the common.” And in“Experience” Emerson speaks far less hopefully of “that reality, for contact with which wewould even pay the costly price of sons and lovers”; then he complains that, in a life of“evanescence and lubricity,” where objects “slip through our fingers then when we clutchhardest,” death may turn out to be the only “reality that will not dodge us” (CW 3:29).59

(Since) reality is bound intimately into perceptual activity—it suggests itself in senses ofsomething freestanding and absolute—and so any real effect must make its appearancewithin terms of a perceptual life prone to illusions, temperamental distortions, serialdisplacements, superficies, and Subjectiveness.60

One major theme throughout this essay contrasts what changes to what does notchange. As we shall see, the illusion is to think that we only need look for one of those, if that

is all there is—it must be either change or the unchanging.61. What else?

Space and time contribute to our bewilderment if neither what changes nor what

remains the same describes reality. Illusion is the habit of restricting ourselves to such binary

views to define reality, despite the realization that none “disturb[s] the universal necessity.”

Even “disaster” is merely a show: “there is at last no rough rasping friction, but the most

slippery sliding surfaces.” Universal necessity encompasses and exceeds time and space. In

the “Conclusions” to this thesis, this writer confesses an inability to make any more headway

than that.

The comments from early in the essay belong to his first theme of Illusion. A bit of

clarity appears near the end of the essay where he writes,

But far be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism;—sincethere never was a right endeavor but it succeeded.62


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Emerson thus offers a joke in place of an answer or a resolution. He does not justify his

conclusions by collecting objective data to which one applies analysis. Nor, as other

comments in the essay make clear, does he place much reliance on speculation. Such

attempts, by both reason and strict empiricism, prove fruitless.

The essay shows clearly that Emerson is familiar with and respectful of Kant‟s work. In

the next segment of the essay, he writes,

Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide throughnature.63

He and Kant agree on the nearly unlimited capacity of human perception to lead us astray in

the results of experience. We, as a civilization and as individuals insofar as we are honest

about our sense of locale, are not sure we know where we are. But Kant‟s approach to

skepticism is not Emerson‟s.

As was mentioned earlier, Brown writes that for Emerson “Perception is a process of

life, not just an epistemological vehicle.”64 He expands on that.

It should be clear by now that I am treating Emerson‟s skepticism as something differentfrom what the word tends to mean in strictly epistemological settings. I have beenlooking at skepticism as a working feature of action and experience rather than as a setof doubts about what human beings can know. Epistemological skepticism, on the otherhand, has concerned itself with the limits of our ability to gain certain knowledge of thenature or even the existence of objects. It may evaluate experience to question thevalidity of empirical truth-claims, or it may evaluate the limits of pure reason prior toexperience; in either case, it judges the possibilities or conditions that predefine anyparticular act of knowing anything.

Now, any reader of Nature and “Experience” will recall Emerson‟s willingness toentertain the extremist doubts of this sort, even those doubts that convert our inability toascertain the substantial existence of nature into a Berkeleyan faith that nature existsonly in the mind. Yet it is also the case that Emerson raises those doubts within aframework of further uses, uses pertaining to ends other than epistemological ones. Inthe “Idealism” chapter of Nature, for example, he almost offhandedly grants the “nobledoubt. . . . whether nature outwardly exists”; but then he subjects it to the criterion latermade famous by pragmatists such as Peirce and James: “What difference does it make,whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament ofthe soul? The relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining the same, what isthe difference?” (CW 1:29)

For the epistemologist, the answer to such questions makes all the difference in theworld, as it defines for us what we can or cannot know about the existence of objects.Emerson makes it clear, however, that for him the difference depends on what we cando with the answer. As far as concerns his ability to make use of nature, the answermakes no difference: “Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only inthe apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what itmay, it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my senses.” The answer tothe question of the world‟s existence, and hence to the question of whether we can havecertain knowledge of objects, makes no practical difference. At the same time, Emersonfinds that a noble raising of the doubt makes a great deal of difference. Doubts,


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especially extreme doubts, work even better than knowledge in provoking us to try outnew experience.65

So while Kant addressed skepticism in order to overcome it with surpassing logic, and

while Emerson is also teaching his readers to be affirmative, Kant attributes our confusion to a

misdirected reliance on reason devoid of or contrary to experience.66 Only the guidance of

space and time governing empirical conditions provides reliability. Emerson, on the contrary,

does not find even space and time sufficiently reliable and thus implicates it in our confusion.

“The secret of the illusoriness,” Emerson later adds, “is in the necessity of a successionof moods or objects.” In contrast to Emerson‟s loss of his dearest object, it is the dryirony of perception‟s automatic continuance, needing no hope of an end to close on, thatfinally presents the most dangerous threat to perception in experience.” Meaningfulperception relies on hope, on the sense of an aim beyond its instruments. Without ahopeful aim there can be no progress, but only static succession, “a series of which wedo not know the extremes, and believe that it has none.” 67

Brown adds, the essay “„Experience‟ displaces the question of reality into an issue of

serial realization. Reality works instrumentally at some virtual point within the perceptual

series, not outside it.”68 I interpret Brown as confirming that Emerson‟s reality is what Cavell

calls “Emersonian Moral Perfection,” which is realized progressively.69

Emerson‟s methodology in “Experience” is little more than offering his carefully

considered beliefs. He uses everyday events to amplify and illustrate his conception of

experience. If that can be fairly identified then, as the experience of experience, even though it

is only one person‟s experience of experience, Emerson‟s appeal is to what anyone can verify

for himself. That does not yet have a logical or philosophical grounding to compare with Kant.

However, while Emerson makes no allusions to Hegel‟s work, one must assume he was well

aware of it—particularly since Transcendentalism‟s primary competition came from American

Hegelians.70

I do not know what Emerson wrote about Hegel. However, I assume that since

Transcendentalism and Hegelianism were primary antagonists in the United States, they must

have shared some of the same interests and perhaps methodology. If that were the case, then

an investigation of the experience of experience might reveal some parallels with Hegel‟swork.71

Emerson‟s reflections, while not systematic philosophy, are not casual opinions. He

sets out his carefully considered beliefs. From the opening argument of the essay, it seems

clear that among Emerson‟s strongest beliefs is a belief in doubt. Further he offers doubt as

what is to be believed, in the sense of trusted. That approaches the philosophical, if for no


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other reason than its resonance in the Western tradition, which reaches back at least to Plato‟s

portrait of Socrates.


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CHAPTER 3

EXPERIENCE AS TEMPERAMENT72

Emerson‟s undesignated theme of constancy and change runs throughout the essay.

The preceding segment, on Illusion, entertained the confusion of change in its constancy. Our

disability is not blindness, not an inability to perceive. Instead, our perceptions are only that,

no more than our perceptions. “We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate.”

That is coordinate with Kant‟s famous “The conditions of the possibility of experience in

general are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience.”73

What happens to us contributes to our understanding, even if confusing, and something is

always happening.

Emerson‟s philosophy of mood stakes out a substantial claim to the new t erritory. His

second theme is Temperament, to which he attributes a power of determination but still leaves

open the degree to which he means something as changeable as mood or as constant as

character.74 The cliché, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” captures the

sense of temperament as character and mood.

Exactly what Emerson intends with the concept “temperament” does not ariseimmediately or easily. An issue that deserves attention, but will not get it here, is the extent to

which the recent interpretations of Emerson have become possible only because of what we

have learned from those modern philosophers who may have been influenced by his work,

some of whom will be cited shortly. No false modesty prompts the realization that, without the

study done by the philosophers who have been and will be quoted extensively immediately

below, I could not have come to appreciate Emerson‟s point in “Experience.” That is also to

say, the topic of temperament deserves a study in itself.

Emerson relies on the image of a string of beads, along with color and hue, to represent

a succession of moods that populate our perceptions. The “iron wire on which the beads are

strung” is temperament, and it “enters fully into the system of illusions.”

We cannot do anything to change or to deny temperament, because it “shuts us in a

prison of glass which we cannot see.” It even dominates momentary spontaneity. Always

“temper prevails over everything of time, place, and condition,” even to the extent of be ing

“inconsumable in the flames of religion.” He admits that the moral sentiment can impose some


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modification of mood, but moral judgments will be influenced and exert influence only to the

extent allowed by temper.

In the examination of what changes, illusion was found everywhere as binding as a law.

Yet even that is subject to a more intrusive “lord.” Emerson writes,

I thus express the law as it is read from the platform of ordinary life, but must not leave itwithout noticing the capital exception. For temperament is a power which no manwillingly hears any one praise but himself.

The whole essay examines what it means when we say, “life.” Here Emerson‟s

distinction between “ordinary” life and that aspect of life that is the exception to the case blurs

those differences; the ordinary is exceptional. What is it about temperament he finds

exceptional? Not that it is either unknown or familiar to us only as solitary individuals. Rather

to us, only our own moods are praiseworthy. We admit awareness of that in our private

thoughts and self-evaluations. Others‟ moods bother us as stubbornness or idiosyncratic

fixations.

Emerson contrasts the “platform of ordinary life” with “the platform of physics,” on which

“we cannot resist the contracting inf luences of so-called science.” It is clear to this reader that

Emerson‟s objection is not to science per se but to “so -called” science, which then explains the

examples that follow of “physicians” and “phrenologists.” It may be necessary for current

readers to remember the extent to which the American Civil War‟s laudatory result, in addition

to preservation of the union and emancipation of the slaves, was that the battlefield physicians

were so immersed in casualties and engulfed by suffering that their surgeries, however done,

were justified, allowing them to violate with impunity previous limitations. Hence, medicine

improved after that war from what was learned during it. In our time, after the immense

expansion of the medical arts, medicine now bears little resemblance to what Emerson knew.

Emerson‟s denigration of „so-called science,‟ as lacking originality, emphasizes his

assertion that temperament has the final word,

Temperament puts all divinity to rout. (. . . )Temperament is the veto or limitation-powerin the constitution, very justly applied to restrain an opposite excess in the constitution,

but absurdly offered as a bar to original equity. When virtue is in presence, allsubordinate powers sleep. On its own level, or in view of nature, temperament is final.

The governance of temperament may limit “an opposite excess in the constitution.”

However, Emerson‟s romantic claim is, that when temperament encounters an “original

equity,” a “virtue,” the combined result is of such a fundamental nature that it ranks as “final.”

He follows that immediately with references to “absolute truth” and “absolute good” in

order to make clear the conclusiveness with which he intends his “final.” Again that contrasts

with the alternatives of “so-called science,” which he describes as a “sty of sensualism” where


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one “would soon come to suicide.” Instead of the “nightmare” of “the links of the chain of

physical necessity,” his own resort is to an “affirmative principle:”

But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligencethere is a door which is never closed, through which the creator passes.

Emerson‟s justification for his selected evidence emerges, employing standards that are

not conventionally empirical, as he discusses this second theme. The many different attitudes

expressed by those observing even the same nature, he writes,

It depends on the mood (. . . ). The more or less depends on structure or temperament.Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung.

Other Views of Temperament and Mood

Cavell asserts that mood is an appropriate topic for philosophical investigation. He is

not alone, as the following brief comments by Gendlin, Kohak, and Flakne show. When

Emerson is examined as a philosopher of moods, mood accounts as both a cause of ourconfusion and a response to it.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove tobe many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only whatlies in its focus.

Cavell recalls his own evolution from negative to positive in evaluations of Emerson. In

his initial study of Thoreau, Cavell credited him with a more genuine relationship to Kant‟s work

than Emerson had achieved. Since then, he regrets that declaration. Now Cavell writes,

The idea is roughly that moods must be taken as having at least as sound a role in

advising us of reality as sense experience has; that, for example, coloring the world,attributing to it the qualities “mean” or “magnanimous,” may be no less objective orsubjective than coloring an apple, attributing to it the colors red or green. Or perhaps weshould say: sense experience is to objects what moods are to the world. The onlyphilosopher I knew who had made an effort to formulate a kind of epistemology ofmoods, to find their revelations of what we call “the world” as sure as the revelations ofwhat we call “understanding,” was the Heidegger of Being and Time. But it was hard toclaim support there without committing oneself to more machinery than one had anybusiness for.

Now I see that I might, even ought to, have seen Emerson ahead of me, since, forexample, his essay “Experience” is about the epistemology, or say the logic, of moods. I

understand the moral of that essay as being contained in its late, prayerful remark, “Butfar be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry empiricism.” That is,what is wrong with empiricism is not its reliance on experience but its paltry idea of ex-perience. But I hear Kant working throughout Emerson‟s essay “Experience,” with hisformulation of the question “Is metaphysics possible?” and his line of answer: Genuineknowledge of (what we call) the world is for us, but it cannot extend beyond (what wecall) experience. To which I take Emerson to be replying: Well and good, but then youhad better be very careful what it is you understand by experience, for that might belimited in advance by the conceptual limitations you impose upon it, limited by what weknow of human existence, that is, by our limited experience of it. When, for example,you get around to telling us what we may hope for, I must know that you have


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experienced hope, or else I will surmise that you have not, which is to say precisely thatyour experience is of despair.75

Along with what we find, there always is and will be that which “befalls us.” As Brown

writes of skepticism,

Much of Emerson‟s hopefulness about human nature rests on his confidence that

skeptical impulses are beyond our control. Skepticism befalls us, as surprisingperceptions do, in spite of our best accomplishments and expectations. Against ourwishes, the Supreme Critic leads us out of false or superannuated pieties back into thevestibule of the true temple. “People wish to be settled,” “Circles” tells us; “only as far asthey are unsettled, is there any hope for them” (CW 2:189).76

What happens to us plays as much of a role as what we make happen. Like it or not,

those are necessarily connected. The skepticism and doubt of science model that at a more

inclusive level. Earlier Brown was quoted writing that “For Emerson, skeptical moments are

biographical before they are epistemological. They befall us, as moods do, in the course of

our empirical passages and endeavors.”77

Our intentions matter to Emerson because of the connection such purposes make to the

whole of things, in the polarity of immediacy and prospects.

Both poles of experience, however, work within a larger compensatory process of life:“Life has no memory. That which proceeds in succession might be remembered, butthat which is coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, as yet far from beingconscious, knows not its own tendency. So it is with us, now skeptical, or without unity,because immersed in forms and effects all seeming to be of equal yet hostile value, andnow religious, whilst in the reception of spiritual law” (CW 3:40-41).

Skepticism looks ahead by withholding belief, working and watching for the fact to be

shown. But there is no doing this without also holding hard to the evidence of the worldat hand, which must ground our enterprise if only by the most chastening contradictions.This is where “our actual knowledge” falls into question, particularly if we allowEmerson‟s point in Nature, that “few adult persons can see nature.”78

We feel handicapped when we are f

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