Speaker: Puskara Prabhu

December 17, 2014

Caitanya Bhagavata: CB Adi: 5.152-169

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Self-Reliance

Ralph Waldo Emerson ca1857 retouched.jpgFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

This article is about the essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. For other uses, see Self-reliance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s essay called for staunch individualism.

Self-Reliance is an essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson’s recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson’s most famous quotations: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”[1] This essay is an analysis into the nature of the “aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded.”[2]