Representative Men

Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon and Goethe, each read as one kind of mind, in Emerson's answer to Carlyle's hero-worship.

by Ralph Waldo Emerson247 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1850(aged 47)
Original language: English

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Overview

Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish historian and Emerson's friend by letter since 1834, published On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History in 1841. In it the great man stands apart from ordinary people, gifted from above and owed something close to reverence. Emerson took up the subject but refused the worship. In a Boston lecture course in the winter of 1845–46, and repeated during his visit to England in 1847, he argued that a great man is useful only as far as he shows the rest of us a power we already have: we read Plato to find our own capacity for thought, and a reader who only kneels has missed the point. Six portraits follow, each a type of mind — Plato the philosopher, Swedenborg the mystic, Montaigne the skeptic, Shakespeare the poet, Napoleon the man of the world, Goethe the writer — and none is spared a verdict. Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish visionary, is faulted for narrowing his visions into a closed theology. Montaigne appears as no unbeliever but as a man rooted in common life who doubts in order to know. Napoleon, admired for doing what millions only wanted to do, ends condemned as selfish and dishonest, an experiment in intellect without conscience. None of the six is American. Phillips, Sampson and Company of Boston published the book in 1850, and three London publishers followed the same year.

Key concepts

What makes someone a representative man?

A representative man is one who stands for a power every person has in some degree, and shows it at full size. Emerson's six each represent one type: the philosopher, the mystic, the skeptic, the poet, the man of the world and the writer. Their value lies less in what they did than in what they make visible in the reader, which is why he calls their service indirect.

Why does Emerson say that Plato is philosophy?

Because Plato's writings already contain the whole range of what philosophy goes on to argue about. Emerson grants him Omar's compliment to the Koran: burn the libraries, for their value is in this book. Plato earns it by joining the two facts at the base of all thought, unity and variety, which Emerson pictures as the oneness of the East and the busy, defining mind of Europe.

What is the doctrine of correspondence in the Swedenborg chapter?

It is the teaching that every thing on earth corresponds to something in the spiritual world, so that nature can be read as a set of signs. Emerson admires the insight, which is close to his own. His objection is to its use: Swedenborg fastened each object to one theological meaning, a horse to carnal understanding, the moon to faith, and turned a living language into a dictionary.

What is the wise skepticism Emerson finds in Montaigne?

It is the doubt of a student toward the particular beliefs a society adores, not a denial that anything is true. Most practical questions, Emerson argues, have only approximate answers, so refusing to pretend otherwise is honesty rather than unbelief. Montaigne's motto "Que sais-je?", what do I know, is its emblem, and his skeptic stands rooted in common life, doubting in order to know.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

What great people are for

Should ordinary people revere the great, or use them? Emerson answers that a great mind is worth only as much as it shows readers a power of their own.

Thomas Carlyle had set the hero above ordinary people as someone owed near-reverence. Emerson keeps the admiration and drops the kneeling. Great men serve indirectly, he argues, by representing powers latent in everyone, so that a reader of Plato meets their own capacity for thought. That is why every hero becomes a bore at last, and why great men exist that there may be greater. The test cuts both ways: Napoleon, the idol of common men, is great precisely because he had their own qualities in excess.

genius
influence
leadership
originality
individuality
education
human nature
culture
ambition
biography

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Six kinds of mind, and their limits

What does each great type of mind see, and what does it miss? Emerson ends every portrait with a verdict, and none of the six is let off.

Plato is philosophy itself, joining the oneness of things to their endless difference. Swedenborg read nature as a language but froze each symbol into a fixed theological code. Montaigne is the honest doubter whose words would bleed if cut, asking "What do I know?" Shakespeare saw the second harvest of meaning in the world and used it only to compose his pictures. Napoleon was an experiment in intellect without conscience, and Goethe, the writer, sought truth for the sake of culture. Each stands for a power, and each falls short of the whole.

philosophy
metaphysics
skepticism
religion
poetry
symbolism
authorship
moral philosophy
ethics
epistemology
interpretation
intellectual history
wisdom
literary style

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Within this work

passages held: 247
distinct concepts: 489
by passages held, corpus-wide: #304

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “knowledge” and “nature”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 17 pairings. 89 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
knowledge	nature	7
genius	knowledge	3
genius	nature	3
knowledge	metaphysics	3
education	nature	2
genius	human nature	2
human nature	nature	2
knowledge	religion	2
metaphysics	nature	2
nature	religion	2
religion	skepticism	2
education	genius	1
education	religion	1
human nature	knowledge	1
human nature	religion	1
human nature	skepticism	1
knowledge	skepticism	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1836 Nature
Emerson's first book, and the seed of nearly everything he wrote afterward. He signed his name to it only when it was reprinted in 1849, in a volume alongside his addresses and lectures.
EN
1841 Essays: First Series
Lectures reworked into essays; with the Second Series of 1844, the book on which Emerson's standing as a philosopher mainly rests.
EN
1844 Essays: Second Series
Darker than its predecessor of 1841, and the book of "Experience" and "The Poet". It closes what is usually counted Emerson's most fertile decade, which had begun with Nature.
EN
1849 Addresses and Lectures
Emerson's public speeches of 1837 to 1844, given to college societies and Boston lecture audiences. The two Harvard addresses here are the best-known occasions of his early career.
EN
1850 Representative Men you are here EN
1860 The Conduct of Life
One of Emerson's most successful books in its day, and the last collection he published for ten years.
EN
1870 Society and Solitude
Ten years after The Conduct of Life, and continuing its turn toward practical life. It appeared in the same year that Harvard asked Emerson to lecture on philosophy.
EN
1875 Letters and Social Aims
Begun to forestall an unauthorized London edition, and the last essay collection published in Emerson's lifetime. Its pieces range from essays of the early 1840s to lectures of his last working years.
EN
1883 Lectures and Biographical Sketches
Added to Emerson's collected works in the years just after his death; a later volume, Natural History of Intellect, followed in 1893.
EN
1893 Natural History of Intellect, and Other Papers
The closest Emerson came to a treatise on the mind, published from his papers after his death and bound with essays from the start of his career.
EN

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