Emerson’s Angle of Vision

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This book recreates an Emerson with intellectual stature, whose vision of the relation between man and nature—the transcendentalist idea of correspondence—founded as it is on human needs and on the emotional rather than the logical connections between ideas, has deep appeal today. Sherman Paul shows why this idea was needed; where, in terms of influence, it could be found; and how it applies in human experience, self-expression, self-fulfillment, society, and history. Paul’s understanding—and adoption himself—of Emerson’s dialectical method, that is, seeing a central problem from various angles in a progressive development, is of major interest.