Nature, Addresses And Lectures Book

This is Ralph Waldo Emerson's first book, Nature, along with a collection of addresses and lectures he gave over the years afterward. Nature itself is quite short, basically a manifesto on a spiritual philosophy he developed himself after leaving the Unitarian church, which later came to be known as transcendentalism. In essence, it's the philosophy of deriving spiritual principles from nature, much in the same way these days you can see biomimicry derive engineering principles from nature.

But Emerson's philosophy developed over the years, and that's what makes this book indispensible for any Emerson fan. Over the addresses and lectures published in this book in roughly chronological order, you can see how his philosophy matured. A big reason is the Harvard Divinity Address, in which he chided the church and traditional Christianity. There was a huge fallout from this, and his later talks became more tempered and balanced, but not watered down. His philosophy emphasized experience more and idealism less, but without neglecting his original idealism. This edition was particularly helpful because the editors wrote excellent introductions to each part, explaining what was going on in Emerson's life and mind at the time, derived from his journals.

My favorite addresses and lectures in this book are The Divinity School Address and Man the Reformer. Lectures on the Times is pretty good too. The others are mediocre. The Young American seemed a little out of character for Emerson, a not-very-passionate patriotic advocacy for expansion to the west, building railways, and for America to develop an intellectual legacy of its own.