Ralph Waldo Emerson Character Analysis

(1803–1882) Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American transcendentalist philosopher. Nietzsche greatly admired Emerson’s work, and in The Gay Science he calls him one of the 19th century’s four “masters of prose,” (the other three “masters” are Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, and Walter Savage Landor.) Nietzsche praises Emerson for championing individualism, a philosophical idea that values the intrinsic worth of the individual. He places Emerson in direct contrast to Thomas Carlyle, who is self-effacing. Emerson, claims Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols, is “more enlightened, adventurous, multifarious, refined than Carlyle; above all, happier” than Carlyle.