LUMEN: The LUX Blog
Published: Friday 16 September 2016
Author: Charlea Harrison
“A nation of men will for the first time exist”: The Search for National Identity
in Emerson’s “The American Scholar”
In the post-independence and antebellum period, American national identity may be seen as a
project under construction for the greater part of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
Though the Declaration of Independence produced a foundation upon which to build this new
identity, by the time Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay widely known as “The American
Scholar”, such potential for national identity was still being explored.
Delivered in 1837 as a speech to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society, Emerson’s essay is
a rallying text that seeks a united nation of man. In Emerson’s “Man the Reformer”, he declares,
“the doctrine of Reform had never such scope as at the present hour.” This sense of urgency to
“Reform” American national identity is present in “The American Scholar”, as demonstrated
through his instructive use of form as he numbers the three primary concepts which should
influence man: nature, “the mind of the Past,” and action (Emerson 246). Evidently, Emerson holds
a clear image of what the scholar, the man, and the whole nation should be. I will now briefly
explore what elements constitute this identity that Emerson is trying to encourage, as well as how
he addresses this to his audience.
Emerson’s opening argument centres on the need to exert creative and intellectual
independence from its former British rulers. He states: “Our day of dependence, our long
apprenticeship to the learning of other hands, draws to a close” (244). This demonstrates his claim
that, though America once learned from and was sculpted by the Europeans, they must now end
this “apprenticeship” and create a new education with which to teach themselves. Here, the concept
is created of Emerson seeking a nation that is self-reliant, rather than remaining dependent on
another country altogether. Moreover, this independent state upon which Emerson builds his ideal
“American scholar” not only rejects the overpowering or ruling of other nations, but also claims
that the scholar has already outgrown the iconic features of other cultures:
We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies
and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the
Troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our contemporaries in the British
and European capitals (Emerson 243).
Indeed, Emerson confidently recognises that America is now its own nation, and firmly expresses
this in the initial argument of his essay. This now makes room for him to establish exactly how
American scholars should act in order to establish a united identity for America’s new independent
state. Interestingly, a primary concept which Emerson uses to direct this is the value of the
individual man in the formation of national identity. In the third paragraph of his essay, he
references a fable from Plato’s Symposium, which says that the gods originally ‘divided Man into
men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better
to answer its end’ (Emerson 244). The analogy of a hand divided into fingers strongly conveys
Emerson’s idea that American national identity requires the unity, and the strength, of each
individual man. This implies a desire for identity based not on a common icon or popular culture,
but on the importance of each individual and their indispensable role towards forming an American
national identity. Similarly, Eric Otto argues that the Transcendentalists used “an improved form of
individuality achieved through the knowledge of self” to push for a more successfully democratic
and unified nation. However, not only does this concept rely on the function of the individual in
creating the nation, but also on the nation creating the individual. As Emerson states: “You must
take the whole society to find the whole man” (244). In this sense, the individual and society are
demonstrated as fundamentally connected and interdependent, as though one might not function or
exist without the other.
The symbiotic relationship between the individual and society in Emerson’s model of
national identity suggests that it is untouched by outer influences. As he states towards to
conclusion of his essay: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will
speak our own minds” (Emerson 256). The tripartite repetition, which declares their “own” powers
and freedom, would certainly suggest that this is the case. However, his essay does reveal some
Romantic influences, most predominantly in the three key influences over the scholar described in
the core of the essay: “the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature”
(245). By describing nature as “first in importance” Emerson clearly recognises that the ideas and
philosophy of British Romanticism had a fundamental influence over the human mind. Similarly,
during the period of late British Romanticism, in the 1820s, America “took pride in literature that
they regarded [as] in conversation with English literary traditions” (Baym and Levine 6). With this
under consideration, it would suggest that Emerson’s view of American identity does not
absolutely reject the influence of other cultures, but rather rejects the forced imposition of power or
influence. As such, when Emerson insists that America will speak with its “own minds,” it will do
so in mutual, balanced, and elective “conversation” with other cultures.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. B. 8th ed. New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Man the Reformer”. Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. N. p., 1996. Web. 12 Sep 2016.
---. “The American Scholar.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Nina Baym and Robert S.
Levine. Vol. B. 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. pp.243-56. Print.
Otto, Eric C. “Misdirected American Democracy: Emerson’s Solution in ‘The American Scholar”.
Ampersand. FGCU: 1998. Web. 12 Sep 2016.