SOURCE: “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 34-57.

In the following essay, Goodman provides an overview of Emerson's philosophical beliefs as expressed in his writings.

Emerson is a direct link between American philosophy and European Romanticism. Soon after leaving his ministry in the Unitarian church (in part because he no longer believed in the “divine authority and supernatural efficacy”¹ of the communion he administered), Emerson traveled to Europe where he met his heroes Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle. There is little doubt of their influence on his thought or of Emerson's founding role in American Romanticism. As Harold Bloom observed, “Emerson is to American Romanticism what Wordsworth is to the British or parent version.”²

What is less clearly established is Emerson's importance as a philosopher. His thought plays a minor role in many histories and surveys of American philosophy,³ perhaps because...