Language:
English
Year of publication:
2020
Titel der Quelle:
Kabbalah in America; Ancient Lore in the New World
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2020) 51-71
Keywords:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Criticism and interpretation
;
Cabala
;
Cabala and Christianity
;
Philosophy, German 19th century
;
United States Relations
Abstract:
Through an examination of specific motifs in the Emersonian corpus, namely the abyss and the Oversoul, this study focuses on the Kabbalah-inflected tropes and their impact on Emerson’s representations of the unconscious by way of German philosophy (more specifically through Jakob Boehme and GWF Schelling). Instead of interpreting these tropes as mysticism, of which he was critical, Emerson viewed them as a link between ontology and psychology (influenced by Victor Cousin’s ecclectism), and as an articulation of the collective and the individual, thus defining the American religion, which Allan Bloom has famously held to be Emerson’s “highest achievement.”
DOI:
10.1163/9789004428140_005
URL:
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