Emerson's "Fate," September 11, and an Ethical Hermeneutic

On 12 September 2001, a day after the pain and loss of the terrorist attacks in New York City, northern Virginia, and southern Pennsylvania, my class on the American Renaissance was to discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Fate." Emersonians will recognize the irony of teaching this work on this day, because "Fate" is Emerson's "cosmic drama" (Whicher 1957: 303); it tackles the question of human suffering in light of Emerson's own theories of self-reliance and moral law. I was concerned about how to teach an essay on human suffering on this particular day, but, more specifically, I was worried about how it would sit with my particular students: cadets at a military institute in the South. I would be discussing this essay in a place where national pride and an overwhelming belief in America as a world leader permeates daily culture. "Fate" is difficult to teach under just about any circumstance for reasons of style, let alone content; delivered as a lecture in 1851 and published, in revised form, in 1860, it reflects Emerson's consistent rhetorical "evasion" (Bloom 1985: 118) and embodies a fatalism that is "Emerson's most characteristic idea throughout the fifties" (Cole 1975: 91). Teaching it on 12 September to a class of military cadets forced me to rethink how to prepare for class.

My typical class preparation is governed by two related theoretical assumptions. I assume, first, like Richard M. Weaver, that any language act, including any act of interpretation, presumes ethical obligation. For Weaver (1970: 223), "Language is a system of imputation, by which values and percepts are first framed in the mind and are then imputed to things." This process brings to language a set of ethical standards and responsibilities; one of these responsibilities, and the second assumption of my class preparation, is a clear sense of historical contingencies that might affect an interpretation. A reading of a particular text must be situated in "particular moments in specific places to certain audiences" (Mailloux 1989: 181). To offer interpretations of texts without understanding contemporary contexts can lead to dangerous misconceptions of how the texts work.

I typically spend time, then, providing significant historical background for Emerson's essay to show my students how it responds to several powerful contingencies, but I was aware that presenting them to my class the day after September 11 might well be ineffective. So I spent most of the night of the eleventh trying to conceptualize how this event must sit with my students, many of whom are destined for the armed services. I reconceived my lesson for "Fate" in terms of a Virginia Military Institute audience, and, truth be told, I prepared myself most of the night for a stereotypical response from a class of military cadets. I anticipated cries for revenge, demands for justice, and an endless barrage of expletives. The vengeance of a southern, Old Testament God paired with military training in swift, decisive action seemed to me a formula for a class period of violence.

But I was mistaken. My class was subdued, measured even, and disconcertingly focused on the assignment. They were prepared for class as though September 11 were a distant memory, even a fantasy, so I proceeded as though we should go on as normal. But as the class unfolded, and as I assumed my professorial role of Emerson scholar, I became aware of my mistake. These students were not unaffected by the attacks; they were not numb; they were not suppressing some deeply seated desire for revenge. They were making sense of the events, and at least some of them were doing so through the reading. "Fate" was resonating with them.

At the beginning of class I gave a brief update on what I knew about the attacks (cadets do not have access to television), and after a few questions a couple of students began to steer the conversation toward the reading. One student, seemingly...