Emerson and the Defense of Equality
eBook - ePub

Emerson and the Defense of Equality

  1. 261 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Emerson and the Defense of Equality

About this book

Arguing for equality as the necessary foundation of liberty

During Ralph Waldo Emerson's lifetime, the idea of universal human equality was under intensive assault. Repeatedly—in contexts ranging from slavery, to marriage, to politics and workers' rights—Americans of the time were being told that equality was an obsolete ideal and that the future would belong to those who accepted the hard truth that liberty lies not in egalitarian values but in hierarchies of domination and submission. Greg Garvey's Emerson and the Defense of Equality focuses on Emerson as a real-time defender of equality during the antebellum culture wars.

In contrast to studies that treat individual liberty as Emerson's primary concern, Garvey argues that Emerson's works define a broad and sustained defense of equality as the necessary foundation of liberty. When read as part of a debate about equality, Emerson's Nature is a treatise on individuality and the common weal; his anti-slavery speeches and English Traits advance evolutionary theories to rebut polygenesist arguments for white supremacy; the essays "Love" and "Domestic Life" challenge gender spheres and explore equality in marriage, friendship, and citizenship. As Emerson speculates on the future, "Politics" and "The Young American" anticipate a "beneficent socialism" in which human rights will always have priority over property rights. In his career-long effort to defend a threatened ideal, Emerson develops an aspirational vision of society that understands equality to be a fundamental aspect of liberty.

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Information

Publisher
University of Massachusetts Press
Year
2025
Print ISBN
9781625348937
9781625348944
eBook ISBN
9781685751746
Topic
Philosophy
Subtopic
American Civil War History

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Frequently Cited Texts
  7. Prologue
  8. Introduction
  9. 1 Political Equality and the “Furious Democracy”
  10. 2 Marriage, Friendship, and the Domestication of Culture
  11. 3 Emerson’s Cosmopolitan Anthropology and the Polygenesis Debate
  12. 4 Liberty, Property, and Socialism
  13. Conclusion
  14. Acknowledgments
  15. Notes
  16. Index

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Yes, you can access Emerson and the Defense of Equality by Greg Garvey in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & American Civil War History. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.