Reconstructing Individualism: A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison

Acknowledgments

{ xi } Acknowledgments B There are many persons and a few institutions to whom I owe heartfelt thanks for helping me to finish this work. First, to friends and colleagues who have read portions of the study and provided both constructive criticism and necessary encouragement: Lisa Marcus, Erin McKenna, Doug Anderson, Joe Thomas, David Robinson , Lawrence Buell, and Michael Lopez. To John Stuhr and Richard Shusterman, who organized a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar on American Pragmatism and Culture that immersed me in the works of John Dewey precisely when I needed it most, and to all my fellow participants who made that summer a memorable and sustaining experience. To Al von Frank and Jana Argersinger at ESQ, who first provided me a venue for my work, and to Barry Tharaud at Nineteenth Century Prose. To Helen Tartar and Thomas Lay at Fordham University Press and to Tim Roberts and Edward Batchelder at the American Literatures Initiative, for their expert support in shepherding the book through the editorial and production process. And to all my wonderful colleagues in the Department of English and the Division of the Humanities at Pacific Lutheran University, who provide me with a vibrant community in which to pursue my vocation as teacher and scholar. Several institutional grants also provided me with invaluable support. The National Endowment for the Humanities funded my participation in the seminar mentioned above; a generous Graves Award in the Humanities funded a semester’s research leave that enabled me to write my two chapters on Emerson; and my home institution, Pacific Lutheran, supported me with two Regency Advancement Awards and a sabbatical leave. Last, I owe a student’s immense debt to the late Richard Poirier, in whose graduate seminar on pragmatism and American poetry I first became enthralled by the dizzying twists of an Emerson essay. My biggest ac K now l E d gm E n t s xii regret at not having completed this study sooner is that I could not present him a copy with grateful thanks for his being a mentor in the best Emersonian sense. To Lisa, Hannah, Cecily, and Maggie, I owe inestimable thanks for giving me the kind of loving home that makes work possible and meaningful . And to my parents, James L. and Phyllis Albrecht, I owe thanks for a lifetime of love and support. Parts of this work have appeared previously in scholarly journals. Portions of chapter  appeared in ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance (vol. , no. ; and vol. ). Chapter  appeared in Nineteenth Century Prose (vol. , nos. –); and chapter  originally appeared in PMLA (vol. ). I am grateful to these journals for their permission to reprint my previous work. reconstructing individualism B Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of thecommunitytoseverhimselffromthemassofhisfellowsandtodrawapart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. Selfishness originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart. Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. Selfishness is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another; individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of condition. —Alexis de Tocqueville This then is the individualistic view. . . . It means many good things: e.g. Genuine novelty; order being won, paid for; the smaller systems the truer; man [is greater than] home [is greater than] state or church. anti-slavery in all ways; toleration—respect of others; democracy—good systems can always be described in individualistic terms. —William James Because of the bankruptcy of the older individualism, those who are aware of the break-down often speak and argue as if individualism were itself done and over with. I do not suppose that those who regard socialism and individualism as antithetical really mean that individuality is going to die out or that it is not something intrinsically precious. But in speaking as if the only individualism were the local episode of the last two centuries . . . they slur over the chief...