Emerson's ‘Self-Reliance’ and political self-education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11952239 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Léa Boman (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Université, ISJPS , Paris, France, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 878-888 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-25 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Philosophy of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-8249 • E-ISSN: 1467-9752 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9752.12627 |
| OpenAlex | W4310297027 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 12 |
This paper studies how Emerson's ‘Self-Reliance’ offers a meaningful account of political and moral self-education in Western democracies. Emerson's moral perfectionism involves an ethical, political and democratic individualism that needs to be reconsidered. This paper explores a perfectionist interpretation of the modern forms of self-education as political and ordinary practices, first with the case of conspiracy theories, which express an individual desire for self-education but appear as the result of a lack of self-reliance and a failure of political self-education, and then through the explicit claim to self-education made by activists in ecological, anti-racial or feminist organisations, which embodies the democratic need for self-reliance. These two examples reveal a new kind of efficient and ordinary political power at the edge of civic commitment. This leads us to define an alternative conception of pedagogy, in which equality in self-reliance matters. This also underlines our moral and ordinary political responsibility and challenges the traditional philosophical opposition between personal and public, subjective and universal. This paper underlines the accuracy of Stanley Cavell's interpretation of Emerson's ‘Self-Reliance’ in order to provide a perfectionist interpretation of activism. It also opens a new crossed perspective between the French and American approaches
Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Individualism · Interpretation (philosophy · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Self · Sociology · Critical and Liberation Pedagogy · Law · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications
The American Evasion of Philosophy
Conspiracy Theories
Emerson's Epistemology
From self-reliance to that which relies
Aversive education
What measures justice? What justifies happiness? Emersonian moral perfectionism and the cultivation of political emotions
Bildung , self-cultivation, and the challenge of democracy
Emerson and the Democratization of Intellect
La reprise sceptique du cogito cartésien et la self-reliance chez Emerson
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |