Self-Reliance

"Self-Reliance" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of his recurrent themes: the need for each person to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of his most famous quotations:

This essay is an analysis into the nature of the "aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded". Emerson emphasizes the importance of individualism and its effect on a person's satisfaction in life, explaining how life is "learning and forgetting and learning again".

The first hint of the philosophy that would become "Self-Reliance" was presented by Ralph Waldo Emerson as part of a sermon in September 1830 a month after his first marriage. His wife Ellen was sick with tuberculosis and, as Emerson's biographer Robert D. Richardson wrote, "Immortality had never been stronger or more desperately needed!"

From 1836 into 1837, Emerson presented a series of lectures on the philosophy of history at Boston's Masonic Temple. These lectures were never published separately, but many of his thoughts in these were later used in "Self-Reliance" and several other essays. Later lectures, such as "The American Scholar" and the Divinity School Address, by Emerson led to public censure of his radical views, the staunch defense of individualism in "Self-Reliance" being a possible reaction to that censure.

"Self-Reliance" was first published in his 1841 collection, Essays: First Series. Emerson helped start the beginning of the Transcendentalist movement in America. "Self-Reliance" is one of Emerson's most famous essays. Emerson wrote on "individualism, personal responsibility, and nonconformity."

Emerson had a very large background of religious affiliations. His father was a Unitarian minister; Emerson eventually followed in his father's footsteps to become a minister as well. Emerson's religious practices can be viewed as unconventional and his beliefs, non-traditional. Emerson understood that individuals are inexplicably different and ideas are constantly changing. He encouraged religious individuals to "breathe new life into the old forms of their religion."

The Transcendentalist movement flourished in New England and proposed a revolutionarily new philosophy of life. This new philosophy drew upon old ideas of Romanticism, Unitarianism, and German Idealism as well as the American republican tradition. Some of these ideas pertained closely to the values of America at the time. These values included nature, individualism, and reform, and can be noted in Emerson's essay.

Emerson's themes include the authority of the individual, according to Anne Marie Hacht. Nothing has authority over the self, she says. One particular temptation is to find enlightenment in history but Emerson argues that it can only come from individual searching. He believes that truth is inside a person and this is an authority, not institutions like religion.