by Blair Bordelon

Created on: October 04, 2008

Emerson's "Nature"

Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to carry with him an eternal sense of optimism. Despite the tragedies of his life (the deaths of his wife, brothers, and five year old son), Emerson still spent his days helping out his fellow man and preaching about the beauty of the world. As an activist in the 1800s, Emerson was either criticized or loved. As a member of the "Transcendentalist Club", he was mostly just criticized. However, Emerson's strong sense of imagery and his obvious passion did eventually earn him quite the following, and though his essay "Nature" was not always his most popular, it serves the purpose of explaining who Emerson was and what he believed, even if I myself do not agree with everything he has to say.

Emerson was not a strong supporter of the Church. He believed Christians spent too much time focusing on past traditions, than they did trying to experience God in the present. He was convinced that one could learn more from their personal experiences with nature than they could from the past. To Emerson, all of lives questions and problems could be solved through nature. He believed that nature existed for four purposes; commodity, beauty, language, and discipline.

With Emerson's first theory, I find myself highly at odds. He states that the world was made for us and works for us. He calls the world our servant and says that everything within it is meant for the betterment of our lives. I do not consider myself a skeptic, but I do tend to see things more realistically than Emerson. It is my opinion that the world does not work for us, but simply works. However, we as a species make it work to our advantage and usually at nature's expense. We take nature's materials, and change them into our own. Emerson calls this art, but not all creations are as innocent. Though, in Emerson's defense, he never had to deal with global warming or the threat of nuclear bombs.

I must agree, however, that nature untouched is indeed beautiful. No matter a person's religious beliefs or personal theories, the aesthetic nature of the world never ceases to amaze. Nature produces many thought producing works of art, and does indeed seem to "satisfy our desire for beauty" (Norton 449). However, I do not believe that nature's beauty comes from its ability to read and mimic the virtues of men. People have done horrible things on days that were sunny, and many good deeds have prevailed through wind and rain.

As for the nature as a type of symbolic language, I think

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