Emerson Ralph Waldo - Emersons metaphysics: a song of laws and causes

Advisory Board

Charlene Haddock Siegfried, Joe Margolis, Marilyn Fischer, Scott Pratt, Douglas Anderson, Erin McKenna, and Mark Johnson

The American Philosophy Series at Lexington Books features cutting-edge scholarship in the burgeoning field of American philosophy. Some of the volumes in this series are historically oriented and seek to reframe the American canons primary figures: James, Peirce, Dewey, and DuBois, among others. But the intellectual history done in this series also aims to reclaim and discover figures (particularly women and minorities) who worked on the outskirts of the American philosophical tradition. Other volumes in this series address contemporary issuescultural, political, psychological, educationalusing the resources of classical American pragmatism and neo-pragmatism. Still others engage in the most current conceptual debates in philosophy, explaining how American philosophy can still make meaningful interventions in contemporary epistemology, metaphysics, and ethical theory.

Titles in the Series

Emerson's Metaphysics: A Song of Laws and Causes, by Joseph Urbas

Death and Finitude: Toward a Pragmatic Transcendental Anthropology of Human Limits and Mortality, by Sami Pihlstrm

Ethical Habits: A Peircean Perspective, by Aaron Massecar

The American Philosopher: Interviews on the Meaning of Life and Truth, by Phillip McReynolds

Recovering Integrity: Moral Thought in American Pragmatism, by Stuart Rosenbaum

Values, Valuations, and Axiological Norms in Richard Rorty's Neopragmatism: Studies, Polemics, Interpretations, by Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Urbas, Joseph, 1956- author.

Title: Emerson's metaphysics : a song of laws and causes / Joseph Urbas.

Description: Lanham, MD : Lexington Books, 2016. | Series: American philosophy series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016032907 (print) | LCCN 2016033542 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498524506 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781498524513 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Transcendentalism (New England) | Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882. | American philosophyHistory. | Metaphysics. | Ontology.

Classification: LCC B905 .U73 2016 (print) | LCC B905 (ebook) | DDC 191dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032907

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To Maud, Michle, and the entire Urbas family;
and to my teacher and friend Roy Bhaskar,
in memoriam

Courtesy Concord Free Public Library.

For support, encouragement, and many stimulating discussions along the way, I would like to thank my colleagues Christian Bassac, Marie-Pierre Bassac, Phyllis Cole, Thomas Constantinesco, Neal Dolan, Sue Dunston, Roberto Frega, Maurice Gonnaud, Russell Goodman, Michel Granger, David Greenham, Paul Grimstad, Jennifer Gurley, Philippe Jaworski, Kelly Dean Jolley, John Kaag, Heikki Kovalainen, Sandra Laugier, David Leary, Marie-Christine Lemardeley, Alan Levine, Gnter Leypoldt, John Lysaker, Richard Macksey, Daniel S. Malachuk, Larry Rhu, Jean-Pierre Ricard, Virginia Ricard, David Robinson, Bill Rossi, Dieter Schulz, James Searle, Franois Specq, and the students of my Transcendentalism and Utopia graduate seminars. I am especially grateful to Randy Auxier and the Emerson reading group at Southern Illinois UniversityCarbondale, whose insights enabled me to make major improvements to the manuscript.

I would also like to express my gratitude to two professional organizations, The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, for providing conference outlets and intellectual encouragement for my ongoing work on the book. I owe thanks too to the organizers of the Naturally Emerson conference in 2015, at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, for creating a wonderfully original event that gave me a welcome boost during the final phase of writing.

This book has been a practical exercise in self-reliance, having been researched and written in the absence of institutional supportwith two exceptions that deserve special mention: my philosophy research group SPH and its directors Valry Laurand and Pascal Duris, who came through a number of times with much-needed financial assistance; and the librarians at the Bibliothque Henri Guillemin, Universit de Bordeaux-Montaigne, who have been unfailing in their practical helpand who kindly looked the other way when I emptied out the Emerson shelves for months at a time. Nor should I forget the librarians on the other side of the Atlantic, especially Leslie Perrin Wilson, Curator at the Concord Free Public Library, and the Library staff (Conni Manoli in particular) for help with the frontispiece photo; and Nancy Caldwell and her colleagues in the Periodicals room of the University of Maryland's McKeldin Library, for helping an expatriate alumnus collect background material on Transcendentalism during his summer visits back home.

The staff at Lexington Books deserve special thanks, and especially my editor Jana Hodges-Kluck for her support and extraordinary efficiency.

I am grateful to the following publishers for material:

• reprinted from The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Ralph L. Rusk and Eleanor M. Tilton. Copyright 1939, 1990, Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher;

• reprinted from The Selected Letters of Mary Moody Emerson, edited by Nancy Craig Simmons, the University of Georgia Press. Copyright 1993;

• reprinted from The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 18431971,Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson, the University of Georgia Press. Copyright 2001;

• reprinted from The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 1, edited by Albert von Frank, the University of Missouri Press. Copyright 1989 by the Curators of the University of Missouri;

• reprinted from The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 2, edited by Teresa Toulouse and Andrew Delbanco, the University of Missouri Press. Copyright 1990 by the Curators of the University of Missouri;