Essays — Second Series

About the book

Emerson's second series of essays moves from the poet's power to give experience expression into questions of character, manners, politics, nature, and reform. 'Experience' complicates confident accounts of spiritual understanding by confronting the difficulty of truly reaching events and other people, even through grief. Elsewhere, apparently familiar subjects such as gifts and social behavior become occasions for asking what distinguishes an authentic act from convention. The essays proceed through assertions, images, examples, and sudden changes of perspective rather than a single sustained system. Their recurring interest is the relationship between inward conviction and the world it meets. Together they offer an Emerson whose confidence in human possibility remains in active tension with disappointment, limitation, and social compromise.

• Individual perception
• Character
• Society and reform

Why read it

Read it for essays that can make an ordinary exchange or habit feel like a serious philosophical problem.

English text