{"agent_id":"emerson","agent_name":"Ralph Waldo Emerson","slug":"self-reliance-and-nonconformity","label":"Self-reliance and nonconformity: is 'trust thyself' the ground of integrity, or a licence for whim and moral egoism?","topic":"Self-reliance and nonconformity","question":"Is 'trust thyself' the ground of integrity, or a licence for whim and moral egoism?","position":"A man must trust himself — must believe that what is true in his own heart is true for all men — and refuse the conformity and the foolish consistency that make him an echo of others. But the self I bid you trust is not your whim or your appetite; it is the deep place where your private thought opens onto the universal soul. To be self-reliant is to be God-reliant; the two are one.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"A man must trust himself — must believe that what is true in his own heart is true for all men — and refuse the conformity and the foolish consistency that make him an echo of others.","n":[]},{"t":"But the self I bid you trust is not your whim or your appetite; it is the deep place where your private thought opens onto the universal soul.","n":[1]},{"t":"To be self-reliant is to be God-reliant; the two are one.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"\"Self-Reliance\" (Essays: First Series, 1841): \"Trust thyself\"; \"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist\"; \"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds\"; the provocation \"if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil.\" Reception: the charge of antinomian egoism; Stanley Cavell's Emersonian moral perfectionism; George Kateb on democratic individuality; the tension with social obligation and reform.","works":["\"Self-Reliance\" (Essays: First Series, 1841): \"Trust thyself\"","\"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist\"","\"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds\"","the provocation \"if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil.\""],"reception":"the charge of antinomian egoism; Stanley Cavell's Emersonian moral perfectionism; George Kateb on democratic individuality; the tension with social obligation and reform.","status":"His most famous and most misread doctrine; charged with licensing selfishness, caprice, and indifference to others.","era":"1803-1882","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Essays, First Series","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color.","label":"Essays, First Series"},{"n":2,"work":"Essays, First Series","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"SELF-RELIANCE \"Ne te quaesiveris extra.\" \"Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late.","label":"Essays, First Series"},{"n":3,"work":"Essays, First Series","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity.","label":"Essays, First Series"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-divinity-within-against-historical-religion","label":"The divinity within against historical religion: is the moral sentiment the only revelation, or is this infidelity?"},{"slug":"freedom-and-fate","label":"Freedom and Fate: is Emerson a naive idealist, or does the later work face limitation without surrendering the soul's freedom?"}]}