“Self-Reliance”, Emerson, Dialogue 6 – D58

There are few things better to do at the MPC than read Emerson in the Jardín Ayau, sitting on the grass and reading it aloud. Instead of doing performing arts, we decided to keep reading Self-Reliance by Emerson. In this dialogue we discussed the things we value, the nature of observation, the scientific ethics, and materialism. The most important quotes we talked about were the followings:

“Yet they (material things) all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.”

• Things related to this quote: “value what you value”, nature of observation, Polanyi: “Science has a moral dimension.”. 

“…it (the popular fable of the sot and the duke) symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.”

• There are people, like Socrates, who we think of them as “gods”, but we forget they were once humans who have awaken. 

“Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear?”

• Here, Emerson puts in question materialism; something that we are still questioning in the 21^st century.