Liked on YouTube: Jammer Talks About: The American Scholar

Jammer Talks About: The American Scholar

In this lecture I'm going to explore an element of Emerson's now iconic speech The American Scholar. The speech was delivered to the Phi Betta Kappa society at Cambridge on August 31 1837, and has since become of the most important American literary and Philosophical documents. In fact the opening paragraph of the speech is sometimes referred to as the "Intellectual Declaration of Independence." In this speech Emerson warns the young men in attendance about the dangers inherent to "parroting" the words and wisdom's of other men. Noting that often the "scholars" of American society simply memorize the lessons and facts of the Greek and other European Masters, Emerson says that young men need to fashion a new and definitively American notion of the Scholar. For Emerson the scholar (meaning citizen, writer, artist, etc.) should be a "Man Thinking." Someone who looks to books for inspiration but finds his own ideas and reality in nature and experiences of the Republic. This idea of separating the individual American's mindset from the "Old World," and finding value in the new American identity becomes not just a political or intellectual position, it becomes an important and vital philosophical position. The books used in this video are: Emerson: Essays and Lectures (Library of America Edition) A Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson edited by Joel Myerson (Oxford University Press) Estimating Emerson: An Anthology of Criticism from Carlyle to Cavell edited by David LaRocca If the viewer I at all interested I wrote a small review of this speech on my blog White Tower Musings when I was studying Emerson in graduate school. You can read it by following the link below: http://bit.ly/2J9MppU If you have any questions or suggestions for future videos please let me know. Thank you for watching. Jammer P.S. I hope you enjoyed the pathetic visual joke at the start of the video.
via YouTube https://youtu.be/7zOzNZLVl-o