Emerson’s Affinities by Alexandrov, Emile; Stakland, Steve;

Short description:

This volume presents Ralph Waldo Emerson’s engagement with diverse philosophical traditions with the concurrent aim of showing the contemporary relevance of his Transcendentalism.

Long description:

This volume presents Ralph Waldo Emerson’s engagement with diverse philosophical traditions with the concurrent aim of showing the contemporary relevance of his Transcendentalism.

As scholarship increasingly centers on Emerson’s place within American philosophy, this collection offers fresh insights into the expansive reach of his thought across Western and Eastern traditions, spanning the nineteenth century to the present. Featuring comparative analyses and innovative applications of Transcendentalism, it connects Emerson’s ideas to global philosophies, religions, and cultures. Thematically organized into three parts, the volume first situates Emerson within Romanticism and Platonism. Part 2 examines his metaphysics and his intersections with both Eastern and Western religious thought. Finally, Part 3 applies his philosophy to education, aesthetics, environmental ethics, and politics. The cosmopolitan essays in this collection situate Emerson not only within Western thought but also in dialogue with Greek, Buddhist, Islamic, and Vedāntic philosophies. Geared primarily toward scholars and advanced students, though accessible to well-informed casual readers, the contributions are meticulously researched and calibrated for specialists in American philosophy, literature, religious studies, and Emerson’s oeuvre.

Emerson’s Affinities is essential reading for scholars and graduate students in American Transcendentalism, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.

Table of Contents:

Introduction  Part 1: Emerson, Platonism and Romanticism  1. Emerson on Plato and Shakespeare: Intelligence and Weak Ties  2. Emerson and German Idealism  3. Emerson’s Anti-Scientistic Naturalism  4. Genial-Heat Imagination: John James Audubon’s Proto-Transcendentalist Sentimentalism  5. A Comparative Hermeneutic: Coleridge, Emerson, and Peirce on the Inexhaustibly Re-Ebullient Potency of the Creative Imagination  6. Emerson: “Nature’s God Neoplatonized”  7. Emerson’s Transparent Eyeball, a Genealogy: Coleridge, Emerson, Muir  Part 2: Emerson, Religion and Metaphysics  8. Emerson, Progenitor of Independent American Spiritual Teachers  9. Nature in the Neoplatonism of Emerson and Al-Kindī  10. The Over-Soul of Nature: Emerson’s Transcendental Philosophy and Vedānta  11. Between the Over-Soul and Buddhahood: Emerson’s Engagement with Nineteenth-Century Buddhist Discourse
12. Emerson’s “Pure Plastic Idea” and the Indefinite Dyad of the Platonic Heritage  Part 3: Emerson, Art, Ethics, and Education  13. Let’s Play with Symbols: Emersonian Filmmaking Within Hybrid Cinema  14. To Thrill and Agitate: Complex Figuration in Emerson and Lovecraft  15. Subject as Sepulchre: Identity and the Emptying of Tradition in Emerson’s 21st Century  16. Fichte, Emerson, Stiegler, and the Rediscovery of the Immanent, Self-Culture in the Era of Dissipation  17. The Floundering of American Education: Emerson’s Influence on John Dewey  18. Can Philosophy Save America?  19. An Emersonian Approach to the Climate Crisis  20. Hermeneutic Circle: Emerson, Peirce, Heidegger