Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson Term Paper

Another point that Emerson presents in his essay is his critique of people's conformity to social norms and rules. For him, conformity marks the death of progress in human society because it hinders individuals to explore and discover their true 'selves,' and hone their skills and knowledge that they consider necessary for their personal development. He further explains why society condones non-conformity or the pursuit of one's self-interest: "For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure...The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour...but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs..." By stating this in "Self-reliance," Emerson assures his readers that the pursuit of individualism is anything but wrong; it furthers improvement of one's self and reflects society's lack of understanding of the value that a person puts to his/her individuality. These assertions correspond to Emerson's earlier arguments, rationalizing on the essence of individualism to both the individual and society.

The last point that he discusses is the primary argument he puts forth in "Self-reliance": the pursuit for individualism is the path towards social progress.It is evident that this assertion is synonymous to the principle of socialism, where philosophers also argue about the importance of one's self-realization in order to prevent and eliminate the existence of oppression in society. Realization of one's true self is the only 'true, whole possession' that individuals can have, and if the individual fails to recognize his knowledge and skills and substitutes these to subsist to the knowledge and skills of others, progress in human society is curtailed and ultimately, fails. This occurrence is demonstrated as follows in the essay: "Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession." Self-realization, then, becomes the only possession that individuals can have and if considered collectively, it is only each individual's self-realization that makes human society progress towards intellectual development and material progress.

In sum, these three points asserted in "Self-reliance" by Emerson are consistent and correspond with each other, allowing him to make a strong explication in favor of individualism and its benefits to human society......