In his essay Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson argues for, among other things, a kind of nonconformity in thought and action. This nonconformity is a recurring thought throughout his essay, as he comes back to this point repeatedly. Certainly, there are benefits that come from nonconformity, and these would be the strengths of such a position. On the other hand, there are also weaknesses in the concept itself, as well as in some of Emerson’s presentation of these thoughts.
That Emerson is preaching nonconformity in this essay becomes clear very quickly. In his opening paragraph, he begins laying the foundation for this concept by saying, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,–that is genius.” Here, he is encouraging the reader to adopt an attitude that is dependent upon the individual’s own thoughts and independent from conventional or societal thought. He goes on to say, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.” Wanting what others have or following what other think is clearly condemned by Emerson, but more than that, he expects each person to come to that conclusion on his own. Of course, Emerson spells out this concept of nonconformity in no uncertain terms when he says, “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.”
One of the great strengths of nonconformity is that it opens the door to new thoughts and new ideas. When people leave the accepted standards and begin pushing the envelope, they expand the realm of human knowledge and understanding. Emerson says, “… the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.” Later, he goes on to discuss those who spoke their thoughts in hard words, saying, “Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.” Emerson applauds those men who stepped outside the realm of conventional thought to expand human knowledge and reasoning, even if they were misunderstood in their own times or in modern times.
Even in times when the end result is not desired, the process of getting to that result has its own rewards. When speaking of reading “some verses … which were original and not conventional,” Emerson says, “The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain.” That the author of the poem was willing to present his unconventional thoughts was more important to Emerson than the thoughts themselves. Emerson would have said this man was well on his way to being Man Thinking.
A weakness in the doctrine of nonconformity is that the spread of nonconformity eventually leads to conforming to a different point. If enough people no longer conform to the accepted standard, they are no longer nonconformists but rather have established a new standard to which to conform.
To carry this thought forward, Emerson’s call to nonconformity is, in a very real sense, a call to conform to his way of thinking. There seems to be a paradox in the very fact that Emerson presents this material. If the true man must be a nonconformist and he comes to this conclusion as a result of his education, what need is there for Emerson to write about such? If he feels the need to write so strongly upon this topic, does it not, in fact, reduce the weight of his own argument? If he is successful in persuading the reader with his argumentation, has he not convinced this reader to conform to Emerson’s thinking and not just the reader’s own thought process? Emerson says, “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” If this is really true, why is he writing an essay aimed at convincing people of the validity of this approach?
There is another paradox that appears in Emerson’s argumentation. On one hand, he argues that “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,–that is genius.” Later, he argues that nonconformity “is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.” If it is genius to believe that a person’s own thoughts are true for all men, it would seem that the genius would be forced to conclude that indeed, he did know someone else’s duty better than that person. Emerson even seems to anticipate the argument of these weaknesses and attempts to cut them off, saying, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” He goes on to entirely dismiss conformity, saying, “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.”
Emerson’s strong stance for nonconformity cannot be denied in this work. He sets forth in no uncertain terms. He certainly establishes some of the strengths of this position, especially touting the expanding of human knowledge and reasoning. However, there are weaknesses present in the presentation that are not only not expounded on, but are hard to ignore.
Reference:
- The full text of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” can be found at www.youmeworks.com/selfreliance.html
