I had a discussion with Mr. Cook and David today after the class about the purpose of Emerson's work. We concluded that he wrote this paper to address the importances of the scholars and to point out their flaws.
Just like the beginning story of "body"and Mankind versus men, the people in the society is now separated from each other. Mankind should work as a system that includes every person and his profession. Emerson says the scholars are like the brain of the system, implementing knowledge to benefit the rest of the society. Likewise, the farmers, lawyers, teachers, doctors are using their profession not only to make a living, but also to give out what they have to the society. The scholars who are the leaders should emphasis this idea. In fact, they only sit around and "think" about philosophies alone without publishing to the society to benefit others. The purpose of Emerson's speech is to point out the significant of revealing scholars' influences to the whole society.
Howl vs. Leafs of Grass 5/18/11
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The major shocking similarity I see almost immediately is that the
formatting is very much the same in both of these works. It gives an
initial idea, and t...
14 years ago
I am sorry that you have missed some class. You and I need to work through some of the materials that you have missed out on. Emerson does point out that scholars are the delegated thinking part of the huge creature called Man. Then, he tells the scholars that they have three major influences to consider and that, once they learn from those influences, they have a set of responsibilities. The central idea of the responsibilities is that they must have the courage to walk their own path, no matter what the cost, and they must share what they find. For the American Scholar, this means that he must learn to tell the story of this new land, and he must find new ways to tell that story.
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