emerson: address on education

Greene Street address, June 1837 [ELectures vol. 2]; American Scholar does not borrow directly from this. But I see here places to understand better the tricky metonymy of AS (what Bloom reads as metonymic reduction). Also see here in his focus on ‘the office of a true education’ the links to ’secret of his profession’–and fact that this is grounded in a school, and in thinking about the practice, not just theory of education (notice how he ends, not wanting only to theorize)

how i connect this more specifically with a rethinking of literary education (and even further–with ideas for writing?): the ‘grammar’ of metonymy that links learning with living, dictionary with life: an underlying grammar of emerson’s thoughts on education, learning, scholar, life; but also, to extent that it is about metonymy, a grammar of rhetoric, an idea for renewing an understanding of how the scholar (word that links both student and teacher) engages the world as a writer (or as nature’s writer; think of how he views Goethe) rather than merely entertaining with empty words. 

This last point about mere words vs. mediation: links Greene St. (p. 202) to the critique of bag full of words/shut up in schools that moves from journal (9.14.39) to lecture. And the sense of mediate, moves forward to Dewey; so i think this renewal can be opened up with Dewey–but perhaps also lead to some renewal of learning metonymy in Dewey. So: ‘the way to learn grammar’–not a metaphor. but metonymic in sense of actually part of the literary education he is envisioning; and a vision of such metonymy (of langauge as a grammar of metonymy–learned or reproduced as a living/embodying. 

195: my thoughts upon the defects that show daily more glaring in our systems of education… the peculiar aspects of the times draw new attention to the subject of Education.

see here that the crisis is directly focused on Education and ’systems of teaching’–the panic of 1837 filtered through learning and educational institution, not more generally the culture or the issue of literary independence. 

196: he will find parts and beginnings, but no whole… he does not use leraning as an instrument… He is a Lexicon.

seems to be a version of the Man thinking beginning, the absence of the whole. But a closer reading here warns against the way AS might be read to dismiss ‘metonymic reduction” and misread Emerson’s interest in metonymy.  I notice the problem is that the parts and beginnings have been stopped. Or that man is ’subject to things’–so the problem is there is a reversal (master slave dialectic he invokes). In AS: this reversal is when thinking turns into parrot of other thinking: in other words, reversed/fixed into thought. Passive/active also invoked here.

but insight here: the problem is that thinking and learning are not ‘instrumental’ enough, not kept–in a word–metonymic. Become fixed: lexicon. Think of not only this metaphor, but how it would relate to his vision of language: as dead metaphor being forgotten metonymies.

i also here echoes in dewey, that could help with what is tricky in the reversal: instrument/means and ends are in relation. They are not mutually exclusive. But means are being turned into ends. Whereas the means are the end (in effect for dewey, to dial up his notion of learning as symbolic mediation, the medium is the message). Yet popularly (or how we misread dewey): think of the problem as being education reduced to instrumental (mere skills). But real problem is the meatphorizing/fixation (not reduction, but consumption–in contrast to prosumption?) of the learning process for its forms.

197: thus “desperate conservatism clings with both hands to every dead form in the schools.”

dead forms of language: as in a lexicon. Problem in this metonymy (of the man/scholar for his tool) is that it stops being metonymy: or active, ongoing; stops being a learning metonymy–that is, a part of learning.

links to ‘cold conventions’ of the journal passage on Mann: with furhter implications here on 199 with ‘we scarce educate their bodies..the eye and the hand” (learning by hand, as we find in the reference to his neighbor thoreau)

and to the capital secret of his profession [here, 202] that further links with cold/frosty conventions of preaching/intellect (here intellect) removed from experience. Note also on 202: the mediation of symbol (evident in dewey) is here: mediate and symbolical character of things. The problem then is when this present participle (thinking/analogizing) mediation stops being a medium.  I associate ‘mediate” and this sense of mediation with metonymy: with notions from Jakobson of contexture; and from recent views that link metonymy with forms of mediation.

With this re-focusing on metonymy: suggest new views of the famed passages in AS: life is our dictionary; the way to learn grammar. Rethinking the grammar of learning (and isn’t the very word grammar, as well as the concept, a fundamental metonymy?–the way we form produce, reproduce language from the experience of using language and letters) by way of a grammar of metonymy.

197: immense activity of the senses; devotion to the sense; prodigies of mechanical invention

a note for Birkerts here: how the ‘fever’ of the senses and mechanical precedes the digital/electronic (or earlier versions of the electronic). Can be read I think as another version of the problem being the stopping or unnatural fixing of attention to the senses as product/commodity–rather than method of nature.

this need to rethink the ‘metonymic reduction’ (here it sounds again as if the problem is that man has become all nose or ear or eye) reinforced when Emerson turns to elaborate the need for “a new and better education” (199) in the face of this overwhelming of the senses, not manworthy (so, unmanning): We do not train the eye and the hand. so the antidote is in fact metonymyic: return to the embodying of learning by hand

200: he is a harp on which all things play

a meatphor here for “educing”: work of art..an experiment upon him for educing the perception of beauty and the sublime. But notice that the metaphor is more an image of metonymy: or at least, of a kind of indexicality that is close to what emerson calls metonymy: the relations of things.

201: this sense of bringing out or playing upon the strings: “the office of a just education”

202: the capital secret of their profession, namely, to convert life into truth, or to show the meaning of events

the task of public instruction: this conversion is a demonstration of the ‘use of life’: showing the symbolical relation of things… ‘we learn the symbolical character of life’

this then is the way to learn grammar: to see the grammar of life and experience, its symbolical character–or as I say, metonymic: an analogizing that continues.

203: he repeats: this then is the office of a true Education. And reiterates that it is in stopping, in making this means of learning an end–the symbols fixed (echoes of how he views Swedonborg; echoes of Dewey): it becomes mere routine.

it if teach a little grammar…and there stop.

the focus on the teacher/instructor: his office is to convert his experience/living into truth–and his teaching, to show in effect the reverse: to demonstrate the life and living of the truths. If in either direction it stops, then we get dead form [the dead form of the cold preacher parallels the dead form of language/word: entertains the people with words. and 'low ends'

204: He is in danger of becoming merely devout; and wearisome through the monotony of his thought

thus monotony of thought: past, formed, rut--replaces metonymy of thinking [mono: same, routine; replaces meta--change]

his conclusion: knows difficulty of putting these views/aspirations into practice–teacher’s time spend on details and ‘methods’. Think of this attempt to have theory guide practice (and practice theory) in terms of pragmatic idealism (Romantic pragmatic rhetoric)

another place where i see connection with dewey (who wants theory in practice). and perhaps a way to bring metonymy further: dead forms of teaching, teaching practice, details (think drill, grammar), methods, cut off from theory or truth.

OED:

office: E uses it in its orignal sense: obligation duty, function, responsibilty, form of divine service, rite/ceremony. Seems to be a metonymic chain of reversal that gets us to more familiar derivation of offical (think of the role this plays in education): original, office is a duty or rite; the place it is performed (OED includes workshop) becomes metonymically ‘office’; and from that, we later think of the duties from that office as being official–and the persons from it as officials

‘Composing the World: Emerson and the Cabinet of Natural History,’ Elizabeth A. Dant. Nineteenth-Century Literature (44.1, June 1989): 18-44

uses the phrase metonymy several times in linking it to Emersons’ interest int he cabinet–and as model of his writing. ‘metonymic thinking’ (25); ‘emerson’s art of metonymy’ (31). also goes on to read AS in terms of the transformation/reduction of the cabinet–reference to ‘Emerson’s curriculum’ (footnote: contrast made with ED Hirsch). Thus key support for understanding emerson’s own composition in terms of, and as, metonymy of nature he finds in natural history/cabinets, etc.

I see here an opportunity to take ‘curriculum’ further–think about the educational context of AS and the 1830s, not just economic (her focus on panic, marketplace). to think about metonymy as a writing and learning principle, not just a writng and science (or poetic-science; poet-naturalist) principle.

 

Emerson: lectures

 

Readings: Lectures

 

“The Naturalist” (1834; EL vol.1)

Note here, in one of the earliest of his lectures, two keys: direct focus (using the word ) on education; and from that, focus on how enthusiasm/love [the opposites of cold] are basis for the educational engagement he sees in natural history that is not “pedantry of knowledge”

82: “I have great confidence, Gentlemen, that the spirit which has led you to such conspicuous efforts in the cause of Natural History, is founded in so true and deep a love of the laws of the Creation, in so simple a desire to explore and publish to others their precious secrets, as promises to our society the benefits without the pedantry of knowledge. The benefit to the community, amid the harsh and depraving strife of political parties, of these pure pursuits is inestimable.”

 

76: “There are specific advantage to be sought in Education from Science.”

70: his opening question: “What is the palce of Natural History in Education?”

 

“Home” (12/12/1838): precedes the School.

Editorial notes it as central metaphor in the human life series: might suggest that home is key metaphor for emerson—but tricky as we see in this lecture: since it turns into the metonymy for the places where soul/spirit is located/associated, but never finally. So, the home is the sign of homesickness, and in the end the place of the fundamental uncanny nature of the individual, a stranger even to himself and his body.

 

This characterizes the problem of locating in emerson a stable philosophy of education: it too is a philosophy of homesickness; or, education is that philosophy: a movement of learning and leaving. In this lecture, the phrase that best suggests this: “home becomes a school of constant education” (32).

Can read the essay itself, the writing and its strange transitions and contradicitions, for evidence of this becoming; note also the doubleness of ‘constant’ in line with E’s views of method of nature: constant flux.

Key links here to image this view of education: comparison to the role of estrangement we find in his views of friendship, self-reliance (alientated majesty) and in intellect. [much in this lecture suggests the character of Cavell’s sense of moral perfectionism]; also for views of foreignenss as model for environmental learning (?Richard sennett)

 

One way to frame this (recongnizing that Home is yet another name for the variety of associations that we can make to locate soul or intellect—for education in the sense of receiving this soul): to see that Emerson’s interest in ‘home-schooling’ indicates not just a place where e’s educational theory has been neglected (and might be of interest to home-schooler’s) but also how it it difficult to try to translate emerson’s theory into a definable method—working as it does toward ‘anti-mentoring’ at best, at worst, what seems to be the disappearance of a sense of individual (or home) in the very attempt to cultivate him.

 

[“A household is the school of power.” The line from Emerson’s lecture “Home,” second in his “Human Life” series delivered in the Masonic Temple in Boston in the winter of 1838/39, suggests that the sage of Concord may have much to say to educators and parents today interested in home-schooling. The lecture offers a “philosophy of Home” that Emerson links to his theory of education. In the next lecture in the series, “The School,” such views of education are rendered more explicitly—Emerson takes up the issue of the cultivation of intellect and a critique of how the school as an institution has failed in that endeavor. In “Home,” the view of education is more metaphorical, though crucial: home is a central metaphor for the location of the universal in the individual and local—a place for the Soul. Emerson returns thus to the image from his first work: Every spirit builds itself a house..”

 

But the image of home, as we learn from this lecture, is not merely metaphorical—not just another image for Emerson to paint his picture of spirit. I would suggest that what we begin to learn in this lecture, in his depiciton of what I am calling home-schooling, is the centrality of the idea of education in Emerson: a topic of his thinking, it seems to me, much neglected by American educators—the very people who teach Emerson (required reading at a variety of levels) but have poorly received his influence on education itself. This neglect is marked somewhat in the relative lack of interest I have found in the home-school movements reference to Emerson. I offer here, in focusing on “Home,” a sense of what Emerson’s philosophy of home-schooling might offer that movement—and more generally, discussions of educational philosophy of which they are a part. I also suggest, by way of this focus, how and why Emerson’s crucial theory of education, at work here but also evident throughout his writings, fails to find its home in American education. I mean to suggest, then, the outlines of a larger project—one that offers to Americna educators a way to return to this legacy; but is also mindful of the difficulties of instituting that legacy which is, as readers of Emerson will now, nothing if not anti-institutional. [the man who claims ‘no school’] home-schooling doesn’t solve the problem for us; but perhaps as today’s home-school is set in tension with the school, so might we also see Emerson’s school

 

Emerson’s most direct discussions of education come in the lectures [including next series; also Greene Street Address]. From these passages are interwoven in more familiar essays. But we-and I think specifically teachers of American literature—forget that his two most famous writings began as lectures and that they focus crucially on the question of learning…

“home is set in this context. It comes on the heels of the Divinity Address and its reaction; a year after American Scholar. In the midst of his focus on ‘the times’ when education is a primary concern. What “Home’ offers then in its initial focus on the household as a “school of power” is a very positive counterstatement to the kind of deadness of schooling Emerson saw around him.

 

 

“The School” (December 19, 1838 lecture in ‘Human Life’ series) at Masonic Temple. [in Early Lectures vol. 3—notes that passages end up in self-reliance and cabot draws on this for the later ‘Education’ published posthumously in 1883]

 

34: General focus (and preceding) on the “soul who lives the human life”—turns here to its ‘nurture and breeding’

The ‘School of Man’

So first indication that we are not dealing explicitly with schooling in the already traditional sense—but a kind of transfiguration of that term, in terms of emerson’s interest in spirit and transcendental (p. 36: the ‘lap of immense intelligence’

Other transfigurations (cf Cavell on this) of educational terms, re-signified: intelligence, instruction, intuition (which thus changes focus on the typical use of ‘tuition’) information

 

35: example of this transfiguration of the terms/sense of education—with larger implications here of a radical understanding of education—open to all, not dependent on any particular apparatus (like books) or station. And of a sense of a spiritual education, centered on inspiration and the soul

 

“And in the high sense of instinct… [so, think of this transfiguration of terms as returning to ‘high sense’] primary teacher

“All men are taught of this…The co-presence of the living soul is essential to all teaching. The informations of the soul ..are so great ..they degrade all the other teaching into mere organs and apparatus.”

 

See here familiar views from Emerson on thinking (reception) and nature—here applied to teaching. Education as inspiration, information of the soul. Which Emerson then extends to the more traditional senses of tuition and books—but with understanding that these are secondary and shaped/used by this primary intuition.

note in this transfiguring (or renewing) of the common language we use for education: intuition before subordinate teachings, tuitions, we see that there is room to renew the word ‘information‘ [and also see how this resistance to traditional tuition might be resason for educational institution disregard for emerson.

 

36: A man is a method.” [shows up in ‘spiritual laws’]

Another way to frame the view of genius/nature—with resonance for teaching: methods of teaching are secondary to the center of all education: the individual method of being/thinking that every man represents.

 

37: emphasizes the subconscious nature of this genius—using the language of impression (echoes of memory, photographic thinking) and ‘natural magnetism’

But also ties this in to the interference this natural method of education (intuition) runs with tuition.

Idle books under the bench image: contrasted with ‘academical or professional education’

‘And Education often wastes its effort in attmepts to thwart and baulk this natural magnetism..’

man is method: use for figure of metonymy? a metaphor of man’s metonymic nature–man as magnet, as impressible (37: impressive; links to views of memory). so methods in education might be viewed as metonymies for this natural method of intuition–or potentially fixed versions–where this natural metonymy is thwarted [again: tie to view of fixing symbols/mediation of learning dewey addresses]

 

[compare to views of acquisition vs learning—Biology of writing?

What educational philosophies does this compare to most—rousseau? Piaget? Recent views of cognitive such as Gardner?

Certainly seems to relate to views (as in dewey) of learning that is natural to the child.

These impressions that are readable in certain facts, characters [echoes of ‘fate’ passage on impressionability] are contrasted with symbols as “conventional images of books”

[tie in to dewey and the issue of symbols and conventions?]

 

39: note how the discussion of this ‘instinct’ and ‘our real education’ turns to the pragmatic reality of ‘experience’ [with anticipated echoes of ‘Experience’ and the falling away]. So education is also the experience of experience.

‘The things we now esteem fixed shall one by one detach themselves like ripe fruit, from our experience, and fall…facts as fugitive as any institution past

 

This primary instinct (lordly intelligence) informs the secondary instincts: wants and faculties, ‘this craving body’ physical necessities that teach us to hunt, etc.

Note he frames this in terms of “most irritable and all-related texture”—thus as man’s first book.

Also—first sense of the bodily in education—perhaps played out in notion of the metonymic?

 

40: His condition is the next tutor.

41: in our condition are the roots of language and communication

The relation of things

‘the education we receive from things..’–link to the article from TCRecord, education we receive [where context is a focus, reception as relation, perhaps another metonymy]

support for viewing the ‘life is our dictionary’/grammar as fundamentally metonymic vision: connection and contiguity with things; the emphasis on nearness. And an understanding that it is, (as lodge emphasizes with metonymy) recognizing the nearness, finding the deletion of relation that is metonymy, is the condition of schooling. to educate is to regard or ‘open himself’ to this ongoing education. Also see here that ‘thing’ is not merely pejorative (as the AS reduction has been viewed). there is an important relation between words and things, bodies and things. The need to know a thing.

 

Third: the teachers that are incarnated in the form of persons

Common nature: other souls [links here with ‘uses of great men’ and allo-biography]

43: in conversation with another there is a ‘third party’ that points to the soul/common nature: which Emerson here names ‘God”: it is impersonal.; is God

 

So: I will need to think about the sense that emersonian education is crucially a return to this “God” and soul [echoes of wordsworth, intimations] and thus failings of education are in part because of lack of spirit.

But from emerson will also need to contrast this with the bulk of the recent controversies on religion and education.

Place to begin the emersonian critique of religion (in contrast to his use of “is God”) is later in essay, p. 48

“If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church..i have died to all use of these new events that are born…life every hour’ [echoes of his concern with ongoing revelation; so education as a spirtiual revelation, rooted in the everyday, and ongoing]

 

Fourth: another ‘fund of influence and information to the pupil” through Books.

Note this use of ‘fund of information’ 43

Emphasizes understanding that books are record of past, mask of thought—not to be thought of as fixed, a kind of mediation of thinking that we receive [keyword: receive, 44]

But then takes up question/contradiciton: if this is so, why would any one book/record remain a a hundered years

45: His answer: “so impassable is at last that thin, imperceptible boundary between perception and creation.’

46: while we read, we can have perfect understanding/fellowship; but when we ‘assay to write’

But then adds, “he can and should make this passage”

Sense that great books remind us how difficult it is to write them, but should also inspire us to try—and further remind us that we need to be careful in stereotyping them [echoes of views in ‘shakespeare’

47: thus ends with the problem of books intervening between man and the spirt that gave them forth [back to interference of intution and institution tuition]–thus book information (fixing/stereotyping of the original ‘utterance’ gets in the way of the soul’s information

similar argument as in AS–more direct focus on the danger of ‘teaching of books’ and of the problem of writing/printing:

 

So Books for emerson as index/image of important creativity—received by all, but not necessarily easily repeated; and of the problem of the limited senses of schooling.

 

‘with the teaching of books universally that they are suffered to intervene…’

See this issue linguistically:

Primary sense: teaching (found within or transferred through) of books—as noun/gerund.

Vs secondary: teaching books

Again—issue of mediation

 

Fifth: facts, the everyday

The revelations of truth in “life every hour” (48)

49: placing of facts/relations is key

Like the alphabet—no value but what place gives them.

[another way to evoke e’s sense of education as a reading of the symbols of spirit—but one that is based in metonymic chains, sifting.

Thus the transfiguration under way in this lecture—placing the terms of education/schooling in a different register of meaning—is itself an example of the education we receive from facts

Can tie this directly to the cavellian: emerson preparing for the condition of his reading, or performing it.

 

And also think of how ‘facts’, like books, is a staple of traditional views of schooling.

So what is being transfigured here is not content (one set for another), but our conditions for understanding what education is (that we are already receiving)

 

Wonders in the small and common not less than the great [tie to his interest in the common: here not merely a pragmatic education]

 

50 concluding paragraph.

Note how the sentence, putting the subject at the end, the verb to learn is last; the syntax is noticeable, turning passive, in contrast to the earlier active phrasing—emphasizing that we learn by being receptive to the learning/teaching that is already happening. I see this reinforced in “willingness to be taught”—where the passive construction is unusual—we are the subjects of teaching.

Also: an open ear.

[which raises question-do we need to read emerson on education with our ears—and what does that mean?

 

Words to delve: taught; school; teaching

 

School: note the roots in holding in one’s hand—links to scheme (perhaps just as method leads back to the live metonymy of using the hands)

 

school (1)

"place of instruction," O.E. scol, from L. schola, from Gk. skhole "school, lecture, discussion," also "leisure, spare time," originally "a holding back, a keeping clear," from skhein "to get" + -ole by analogy with bole "a throw," stole "outfit," etc. The original notion is "leisure," which passed to "otiose discussion," then "place for such." The PIE base is *segh- "to hold, hold in one's power, to have" (see scheme). The L. word was widely borrowed, cf. O.Fr. escole, Fr. école, Sp. escuela, It. scuola, O.H.G. scuola, Ger. Schule, Swed. skola, Gael. sgiol, Welsh ysgol, Rus. shkola. Replaced O.E. larhus "lore house." Meaning "students attending a school" is attested from c.1300; sense of "school building" is first recorded c.1590. Sense of "people united by a general similarity of principles and methods" is from 1612; hence school of thought (1864). The verb is attested from 1573. School of hard knocks "rough experience in life" is recorded from 1912 (in George Ade); to tell tales out of school "betray damaging secrets" is from 1546. Schoolmarm is attested from 1831, U.S. colloquial; used figuratively for "patronizingly and priggishly instructing" from 1887.

 

 

[note links between educate and inform/information—thus e’s informations of the soul goes back to these roots, re-figuring what information means]

 

educate

1447, from L. educatus, pp. of educere “bring up, rear, educate,” related to educere “bring out,” from ex- “out” + ducere “to lead” (see duke). Meaning “provide schooling” is 1588. Educationese “the jargon of school administrators” is from 1966; educrat first attested 1968, usually pejorative, second element from bureaucrat (q.v.). Educable is from 1845. Educated guess first attested 1954.

educe

1432, from L. educere (see educate).

miseducation

“wrong or faulty education,” 1624; see mis- (1) + educate.

uneducated

1588, from un- (1) “not” + pp. of educate.

inform

1320, “to train or instruct in some specific subject,” from L. informare “to shape, form, train, instruct, educate,” from in- “into” + forma “form.” Sense of “report facts or news” first recorded 1386. Informative “instructive” is from 1655. Informer “one who gives information against another” (especially in ref. to law-breaking) is from 1503.

illustration

c.1375, “a spiritual illumination,” from O.Fr. illustration, from L. illustrationem (nom. illustratio) “vivid representation” (in writing), lit. “an enlightening,” from illustrare “light up, embellish, distinguish,” from in- “in” + lustrare “make bright, illuminate.” Mental sense of “act of making clear in the mind” is from 1581. Meaning “an illustrative picture” is from 1816. Illustrate “educate by means of examples,” first recorded 1612. Sense of “provide pictures to explain or decorate” is 1638.

 

Could add ‘grammar’ to list of words that are being transfigured: to extent that it takes us back to the writing roots (which for emerson is base in nature and expression): the problem of ‘grammar school’ can be thought of as the neglect of what grammar really means—how it exists apart from schooling (think of ‘this is the way to learn grammar’)

grammar

1176, gramarye, from O.Fr. grammaire “learning,” especially Latin and philology, from L. grammatica, from Gk. grammatike tekhne “art of letters,” with a sense of both philology and literature in the broadest sense, from gramma “letter,” from stem of graphein “to draw or write.” Restriction to “rules of language” is a post-classical development, but as this type of study was until 16c. limited to Latin, M.E. gramarye also came to mean “learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes” (c.1320), which included astrology and magic; hence the secondary meaning of “occult knowledge” (c.1470), which evolved in Scottish into glamour (q.v.). A grammar school (1387) was originally “a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught” [Johnson, who also has grammaticaster "a mean verbal pedant"]. In U.S. (1860) the term was put to use in the graded system for “a school between primary and secondary, where English grammar is taught.”

 

teach

O.E. tæcan (past tense and pp. tæhte) “to show, point out,” also “to give instruction,” from P.Gmc. *taikijanan (cf. O.H.G. zihan, Ger. zeihen “to accuse,” Goth. ga-teihan “to announce”), from PIE *deik- “to show, point out” (see diction). Related to O.E. tacen, tacn “sign, mark” (see token). O.E. tæcan had more usually a sense of “show, declare, warn, persuade” (cf. Ger. zeigen “to show,” from the same root); while the O.E. word for “to teach, instruct, guide” was more commonly læran, source of modern learn and lore. Teacher “one who teaches” emerged c.1300; it was used earlier in a sense of “index finger” (c.1290).

 

[note index/metonymy here; also the roots of instruction as based in signs, marks (issue again of transfiguring symbols]

 

“Genius” (January 1839 part of Human Life lecture series)

Defined as “enchantment of the intellect”: so, the soul, as it relates to thinking and related intellectual areas: art, poetry, history.

 

For use:

Issue of genius being representational, interpreted: thus mediated/read in books and libraries (69)

 

71: emphasis on spontaneity and unconscious quality of genius

Thus can think of the problem he associates with how genius is thought—taxed with loving falsehood, etc—because of the way his thinking seeks to present this condition of thought/genius

And thus might apply this to why emerson might be thought as ineffective for a school of educatin

72: ‘somewhat higher than common sense’ that resists the ‘common sense’ that stops at fact.

 

74: mystic pencil: figure for how, without instruction, like the child who knows how to draw, we let the unconscious genius instruct our thinking and doing

[here could begin to tie to ideas of teaching writing that focus on the problem of the unconscious, or learning in general as not instructed

Here also a re-defining of ‘instruction’ to extent that it is based on what is already informed in us.

In later versions will appeal to photographic ideas of reproduction. I could point there—also wonder if there are other figures more resonant with learning/teaching.

 

Whatever the figures, the keys are: a sense of genius in works/people as an index of a larger genius. So a metonymic view, not (for all its symbolic senses) a metaphor

Perhaps his turn to wordsworths skating (an image he uses for writing)—highlights this sense of metonymy (77)

 

“Education” (February 5, 1840 in Present Age series

[notes that leaves from the lecture are sewn elsewhere—another version of emerson’s composing process—of using his own earlier writing, returning to it much as he describes the way we return to our genius unexpectedly; as I learn more about the process, and look at some of this firsthand, I wonder if this can be tied to the way he also views education.

It strikes me—as a teacher of emerson, thoreau, etc. that even the best of us, most intentioned—always fail to allow our students to engage the kind of literacy and genius (embodied in their journals and re-compositions) that we assiduously assign. That there is a disconnect here that is an important example of emerson’s potential for language education.

 

--Begins with focus on institution: compares the problems of the Church institution and its instructions directly to problem of Education as institution

287: Critique of Church: ‘the instructions of the Church have no adequate breadth..what I hear of there I never meet elsewhere’

“it speaks in a dialect”: contrast with ‘life is our dictionary’ and how he contrasts with the language of everyday.

“Education should be as broad as man…Yet what teaching or book of today appeals to the Vast.”

Here: ties in to the education for all argument from “School,” though see it is not merely a democratic notion—but to deeper understanding that man is broad and education should bring that out of him (genius). Again, about what is already within, rather than what content should go in

 

--convention for Education

Passage from the Sept 14, 1839 Journal, the day after attending convention of Middlesex County Education Association

Critique: the ‘word’ education is cold: system, convention.

Indication that a problem is in the very language of the word.

Perhaps tied to this—the problem that it is not in things: not only not vast (the beginning of lecture), but not “practical and the needful” (289)

Shut up in schools and come out with ‘a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands..’

[in Journal: inserts here, to elaborate the learning of the hands from the schooling, reference to Thoreau and his brother—so invokes the same ideas throeau will write in Walden, critique for uncommon schooling.]

 

Enervated by words

So, a need to return the words of education to things (echoes of Williams, pragmatism?)

Emphasizing experience and experiment—and perhaps need to connect this to other places where the criticism of books/words is not total, but about the potential for books to be unnatural. So, again a need to transform our use of words, not be transformed by them

‘men transformed by boks become impoetnet praters”

 

289: “We are shut up in schools… cannot use our hands”

[ends up in New England Reformers: use this passage as example to trace from journal to lecture to print? His composing process as an example of using his hands?

[note indicates in it is Journal D(JMN 7), page 350ff—some earlier version refers to his neighbor and brother (thoreau)

Originates in JMN 7: 237-240. Use this as a key place to focus attention: not only on how emerson develops ‘education’ thoughts from journal to lecture to text. But for the fuller context: Horace Mann, the ‘convention’ of education (that is, reform is at the origin already a problem of convention), the buried reference to thoreau and farming, a kind of ideal of living by one’s hands that becomes more associated with thoreau—and which we forget is key to emerson; the focus on words and wordiness—tie this to emerson’s project as cavell reads him

 

--Our modes of education are avowedly profane

Argument here: critique of mass-production, time-saving labor, one size fits all versus doing something ‘reverently’

So here it is the profanity of commerical culture (akin to critique in american scholar)—as opposed to lack of religious basis.

[note: profane derives from: outside the temple; interesting that this is being delivered in Masonic Temple? A transfigured sense of a secular temple of learning?]

Key here is not content of learning, but the time

290: extended in the focus on ‘this world of hurry and distraction’ vs the ‘piety and profoundness’ and insigth and time it takes.

 

Perhaps an autobiographical implication here for Emerson’s failure as teacher: the easy application (popular medicine) that is conventional educaiton is distasteful; and the longer view means ‘immense claims on the time, the thoughts on the life of the teacher’ (290)

[could tie this also to how he is not satisfied with his lecturing, including this very series—feb. 19 1840 journal: emphasis on the need for more time for each lecture: in order to have “transpiercing, loving, enchantment’

 

So Emerson’s disappointment as teacher—might be viewed in same light as his views of lecturing—or overall disappointment with any of his work. That is, potentially he is as successful?

 

--system of despair that has ‘paralyzed the theory of education’ (290)

[first place where this phrase appears in his work?

 

“calomel of culture” turned into popular medicine

How does Emerson use ‘calomel” (a cathartic chloride)—does it come up elsewhere? Is it tied to other uses of chemistry in his thought?

 

 

 

Later Lectures

Eds. Bosco and Myerson, Historical introduction, vol. 1

The introduction asserts that Emerson lecturing is the model for his thought, and thus his writing [not just the middle stage of the journal-lecture-essay triad]

 

XX: cites emerson’s own reflection on what happens in a lecture

Think of the lecture ‘house’ as another version of home

‘convertible audience’ [citing his New England lecture]

And Railton: E’s lecture audience reach common ground in his words.

[brings to mind the argument in ‘education we receive

 

Xxiv: notes emerson’s lack of phsyical gestures, disorganization, shuffling of papers

‘forced audience to concentrate on his words

Also note contemporary observations that each lecture was just another name for same thing, and any part of it was the same.

 

Lectures follow his thought process

Xxvii: thinks intuitively, not logically

Xxviii: in the presence of ideas in process of creation

 

Might think of lectures then as a reverse index (notes how emerson derives them from indexing journals): an index of his process of thinking

 

Xxxi: refers to lecture as inviting of a class; lecture as a “class”

 

“Genius and Temperament” (1861) LL vol. 2

Opens lecture with reflection on his lecturing method; refers to lectures as a ‘class.’

Contrasts his own method with ‘more formal and precise external method’

 

Can see this as more than mere apology in advance. Since the subject of this lecture is precisely on genius as a matter of internal method—of implying the inability to be precise or even in control of speech.

 

201: genius is an ‘energy’, enthusiasm that ‘overawes himself’

‘not anything which the man can handle, or describe, or communicate’

[this relates to his view of thinking—above our wills, we do not determine what we will think; also then to his view of the scholar—as appears at end of middlebury address [llectures vol. 1: 100: the magnetism is all; drift of my thoughts—where emerson again ties the subject of the thought to a reflection on his own presentation

Tendency]

[also see this implication of magnetism in ‘Spiritual Laws” where it is further tied to education and a course—as opposed to a coursing? Where education is in oppostion to a kind of natural education, not named thus. “What we do not call education…”

 

Thus can start to build case for where the form of emerson’s thinking (with lecture) as well as the form of emerson criticism—needs to reflect this drift of thinking, this indexing of thought: and I see this drift and tendency (tied most especially to words) in terms of a dictionary with a kind of hypertextual cross-referncing.

As though each lecture/essay is already a kind of hypertext where emerson has ptached different links together but taken the hyperlinks out.

 

201: in defining genius as universal, emphasizes a paradox with this.

A nearness that is also not (or never?) fully evident

All it does we can do, only not yet

[might this be a reason why emerson needs to lecture/write continuously on the same topic after all?]

 

Tied to words: it is the inside of things

Science keep us outsdie, but a good word lets us into the secret of the world.

 

Lecture then focuses on talent vs. genius distinction

 

206: genius defined in terms of nature, transition, power

And surprise: which is tied to speech

208: linked to imagination, use of figurative speech [thus sense that the poetic is the surprise of genius]

 

“Tendencies and Duties of Men of Thought” (1848), LL, vol. 1

Place where the ‘drift’ of thought that he applies elsewhere to his own lectures and thinking is presented as the basis for thought, genius—and in parts extended directly to education (and its problem) and learning.

This lecture directly ties the drifting of genius and wisdom to the way he describes thinking: above our will

 

176: image of drifting, being driven by a pilot/current that “knows the way, though we do not”

[link current to course/curriculum; link pilot, navigator to cyber—the drifting of digital navigation?—seems to be a potential case here for the necessity and benefit of the kind of passivity we associate with electronic text—against the printed word.

‘eye and ear have a logic which transcends the skill of the tongue”

 

181: See in this lecture a movement back and forth (another form of the drifting?) from Emerson recognizing the passivity as necessary, as our condition, and then lamenting it (much as he does in experience or fate)

Here, ties that directly to ‘the perpetual problem of education’

 

Beginning to think of his view of education then in line with ‘fate’: a kind of necessary freedom; or, education is in the experience of this dynamic

 

182: implication of an ideal we will one day reach (so link to views of perfectionism/cavell)

One day, though far off, you will attain the control of these states

[so nearness/next implies connection but also temporal distance]

 

Note that this problem is compared to a man: guest in his house, his thought.

[so link to homesickness]

 

School as the place where we grasp/clutch [back to roots of hand in the word school?] but do not attain.

Which continues to link emerson’s lecturing as his school, his grasping.

 

In terms of an actual curriculum—ties it to the view of language, of wording that we find in cavell and ‘education we receive’—a need to turn this passive instinct/reception into action/inspiration (177): poetically—p. 179, view of the poet’s ‘surprise to the reader’ [cf surprise as also linked to grasping].

And perhaps can further link this to E’s view of shakespeare/poet and photographic thinking

 

 

“New England: Genius, Manners, and Customs” (1843)

Another beginning where the refelction is on the lecturing [in general, can say this is a key difference between every lecture and every finished essay that derives from some lecture: how he begins with the occasion and condition of his speaking.

Tie this to his view of ‘miscellaneous”—think of Emerson as reproducing a miscellany?

 

40: “Many of my remarks are of a miscellaneous character. I am not careful that they are not.”

[note how the syntaxt carefully expresses the the sense of carelessness (reception, the character of his speaking about his will) that he wants to convey: the understanding that genius is both inexplicable but at same time, universal

 

42-43: focus on the culture of intellect and education in New England,

From religious origins, extending to universal elementary education, now to Lyceum

[so here a view of schooling that is positive in historical legacy, including the work of school teaching (reference to Alcott).

 

Note that there is both implication here of a coldness of institutionalized learning: ‘tomorrow’s merciless lesson’

But also of a spirit of learning that somewhat resists and exists with it—and notably, tied to popular/personal reading and to friendhip

‘stealing time to read a novel…

 

Further links this to ‘religious spirit’ [firing imagination, etc], which includes ‘spirit of Coleridge and wordsworth’

 

Next linked to eloquence: Fanueil Hall one of our best schools (44)

Magnetism

 

45-6: refers to edward everett as model of eloquence and “learning available for purposes of the hour”

Triumph of rhetoric

47: notes that EE was not powerful for intellectual principles or thought, but ‘his power lay in the magic of form’

[compres to women: thus sense of the genius as reception, medium, that we see in fate]

 

Also notes that he made popular ‘literary and miscellaneous lectures’ that is ‘becoming a national institution.

[and thus, is the origin of emerson’s own lecturing]

 

48: his view of the lyceum/lecture room as place where this eloquence can find ‘higher communications’ and purpose: depths of philosophy and poetry

Eloquence that can agitate, convict, inspire and possess us

A convertible audience: note how we see here Emerson’s sense of conversion and convertiblity (as in linking of things), a redefintion of the sense of religious conversion [just as he is converting the church into a lecture room]. The converting of turning: of convention and language.

Implied in his ‘ventriloquism’: which places emphasis on the langauge that happens ‘here,’ as well as sense of all topics connected—as though the various titles/names for the lectures and ideas are merely ventriloquism of the common inspiration

‘panharmonicon’

 

“here is a pulpit that makes the other chairs of instruction cold..

49: will use less strict conventions

 

So, an argument for the lyceum and lecture hall as a new institution for education: ‘a school of thought and reason’

 

Goes on to refer to the times and its mechanical inventions: including photogenic drawing (50)—and expands on phrenology and mesmerism

53: mesmerism as a model (in its popularity) for a kind of school and teaching emerson is concerned about: ‘the inquiry is pursued on low principles’

Might argue that the problem is not with the things themselves (indicates they are but specimen and symbol—51), but how these symbols are being used (commodified) and fixed [echoes of his concern with swedenborg. Or, returning to his use of ventriloquism: all ventriloquize but attempt to hide the ventriloquism: ‘dodge the laws and the fates’

 

Continues focus on the importance of the lecture house, specific references to Lyceum, Edward everett.

 

40: opens with note that his remarks are ‘of a miscellaneous character’

Can link ‘miscellany’ to his lecturing/writing

 

48: lecture house as true church.

‘convertible audience’

 

Goes on to contrast this house/potential for higher communication (in eloquence) with that found in the times: phrenology and mesmerism

53: mesmerism as a ‘low’ inquiry.

[next lecture goes on to discuss swedenborg: can see similar argument, potential for realizing the symbolic nature of the world, but danger of fixing it in symbols]

Delve into mesmerism as historical context for the kinds of educational psychology emerson is responding to? Or build from this a view today that educational practice has become mesmerism (or seeks that in terms of testing, intelligence quotients, etc)

 

“new england: recent literary and spiritual influences”

59: coleridge. Could apply his view of coleridge as critic, who gives definitions to leading words of age—to emerson himself

 

60: carlyle; ‘encyclopediacal allusion to all knowables’

64: greatest force of carlyle resides in the form [similar argument with everett—emphasis on the words and rhetoric as the medium, not the content.

66: swedenborg: the double menaing of every sensuous fact.

 

68: link

“It needed some great poet to marry nature again to the mind for men who had lost the link.

69: every word is convertible, million-faced.

And this is also swedenborg’s vice: nailing one sense to each image.

Key view here of how convertibility in E is tied to language and the foundation of reading itself—thus pointing to the paradox of the book—it is based on its own necessity for the language to be not fixed.

 

 

“Poetry and English Poetry” (January 1854)—a source for Poetry and Imagination.

297: opening parable/analogy about Isaac Newton, the apple, and the boy: a parable that gets to the foundation of learning—to extent it is about “meaning” and its relation to the metonymy “of all nature” (how nature ‘gravitates’) and to the everyday

Think of this as representating a tension between theory and practice, or poetry and commonsense (as on 298) still with us. For E, poetry/imagination redeems the conflict

 

Goes on to emphasize the transition and dynamics of nature: in terms of metonymy: things wear different names and faces.

299: lurking method.

So meaning/learning is tied to the ability so see through (by way of the imagination/poetry) the surface variety, the visible nature (which is ‘commonsense’)

‘poetic perception of metamorphosis’

 

Can I then describe commonsense as the metonymic surface of nature—but poetry as the recognition of it as metonymy?

 

A critique here of commonsense systems that are upset by this poetic perception.

 

301: every thing convertible into every other

Learn one thing we are learning all things.

Learning thus (in verbal sense) tied to meaning

 

302: this strange unity..all nature has relation to his thoughts and life.

Thus far seems to continue autobiographical argument from nature, etc.

But here also gets into a semming contradiction that is particularly problem for question of this view of learning for a school. If this applies to everyone, why then the view that those who

‘articulaate these identities of which all are obscurely aware, is rare and divine’?

Note next line: Tis wonderful the difficultyof taking this step.

 

If it is the poet who recognizes and articulates this ‘metonymy’, can this be taught or encouraged for all? Is this elitist? Can it be democratic?

 

304: doctrine of poetry vs. common sense

‘poetry is the speech of man after the ideal” –thus a version of perfectionism? Not the ideal but the striving for it (in which case, it is in theory open to all, but only truly purused by a few?)

 

This poetic perception is basis of ‘science’ and contrasted with ‘schoolmen’

Empahsizes that key characteristic (separating it from commonsense?) is ‘wise surrende to currents of nature’ ‘thought made him’ [link to we do not will what we think]

 

Metonymy thus characterized by reception?

 

Interesting to note that this contrast also takes form of poetry vs. prosaic [wonder then about his writing: where poetry is the ideal, but prose then becomes the means to reach for it?

 

These various contradictions (writing in prose about the poetry vs. prose distinction) may in the end be all part of the ‘difficulty’ he sees, as well as versions of the metonymy, of the strange relations that resist common sense

A theory of education that in its presentation enacts its theory—resisting the common sense it calls for?

 

306: sense that even in the performance of common sense (and tied to this, of using hands, work that is practical) there is still a betrayal of a thinking against the will of the worker.

Thus E applies his theory of thinking against will to the places where it seems absent. In this sense, all work is metonymic—above our wills

Could apply this to his own writing—as though he is performing this in his own contradicitons here.

 

Thoughts have method of their own.

 

What educational methods can best support that? Something named poetry [of which this essay, as prose, is not the example but the method, in failing to be poetry]

 

Back to the apple fable: the ‘meaning’ is not with either Newton or the boy, but in recognizing the metonymic relation between the two—presumably for the poet to recognize that both are correct.

 

Implications from this lecture:

Rethinking of ‘method’ in terms of a thought process that is not logical but double.

And common sense as a perversion (denial) of the metonymy that links the common/local to the universal.

 

This view (version?) of learning that emphasizes convertibility and metonymy (the constant re-naming of the world)—creates a problem for thinking of a method or theory of learning: much as Poirier reads the slithery nature of his writing emphaszing the lesson; the workings of genius.

In that sense, can see that one lessson for us (if he resists a specific, fixed method—soemthing on the order of a list of books a la arnold or hirsch or bennet) is the argument against that: a reminder that they are not the legacy of the american scholar, but a legacy of the school emerson is critiquing as early as 1837, the schooling that we became but does not become us.

Beyond that, in his focus on language and poetic perception, I think there are some more tangible lessons to consider for learning: to locate imagination and inspiration and enthusisasm where emerson does, in the workings of language. A re-focusing on the language arts? On creative reading.

 

Is there something more specific for me in ‘metonymy’: note that for all the assumption of emerson’s theory of language as metaphor, he specifically names metonymy.

And metonymy (vs. metaphor) seems to play out the distinction he makes with common sense devoid of lurking method/imagination (and which applies to arnoldian/hirschian)?

 

 

“Resources” (1864-71)

A popular later lecture—editors note for its affirmation of the american resourcefulness, inventiveness

 

Keywords: recovery of inspiration; experiment; conditions, affirmative, power of words/poetry

 

I note two keys: the focus on the resourceful and inventive nature of man and specifically the American: ‘here in america…habit of invention in their brain’ (343)

 

Is tied to how he elsewhere views invention/fate/genius/character: in terms of impressionability

340: opens with image of the earth itself (and everything in it) as experimental and impressionable, ‘sensitive as iodine to light’

Thus invention as receptiveness—and implicitly as reproduction.

 

2nd: E takes this receptive view of invention and resource and focuses it on the “intellectual sphere” (350) and the inspiration/muses required, the conditions for this reception.

Which leads ultimately to the final muse: language/poetry

 

355: the recovery of inspiration

358: the power of words; sets reader in a working mood

 

So we ‘find our school’ in the experiment of words/language

[note the etymology of school: which derives from holding (in hand), sense of a power, also dervied from leisure—so sense of school as being, in its origins, non-academic.

 

Notion/phrasing: finding a school [in public, non-academic uses]

 

Has been much discussion of Emerson’s keyword ‘scholar,’ but less understanding of the word/concept from which it derives: school. I suppose that I am suggesting, both to understand emerson and education better—and what emerson can help us see regarding education—that we need to go back to emerson’s senses of ‘school.’

 

“The Scholar” [1863—later used in the 1876 UVA]

Keyword: revival, imagination

Adress to ‘literary societies’ and his focus is on advice for ‘the career of letters’

Can use this to develop what he means by this—not something specialized as today, but a ‘literary education’ (mark edmundson) as a basis for power and joy—and in this context, a ‘high office in evil times’

 

305: scholar in theory: ‘earlier information’ organ to receive

‘piety of learning’ [tie to sense of ‘pious reception’]

But contrasted by ‘material prosperity of america’ that beats down hope.

skepticism

 

Activity of the Imagination: cardinal human power, balance of labor

 

Note how this focus on Imagination is tied to piety and spiritual texts as much as to poetry

307: scholar, spiritual guides, clerisy

Defines this as “moral forces’

 

309: every man a scholar potentially

Ties this in to the power of nature—with listing of various discovers, inventors

 

311: faul lies with the educated class

Education on trial. Note the distinction drawn between ‘education’ (which is tied to something the scholar represents) and the educated class, the men of study

Echoes of man thinking vs mere thinker

 

312: the spiritual force that scholar represents set apart from the ‘institution’

 

313: turns to analogy of religious revival; then to sense that we need a revival for “higher state”

Intellectual perception over any intellectual performance

[again, a view of thinking process/power vs. specific act of thought]

 

Could turn to the historical contexts of revival (which would include educational reform) to show how he at once invokes the culture but also resists the specific/institutional sense

 

316: somewhat not educated or educable

Key place where the implication of a genius that is above or before our wills (of thinking and learning) raises question of how best to educate.

Note how his own description of how we ‘divide mind into facuties’ includes emerson in this—could be a listing of his own topics for lectures.

Thus the attempt to educate the un-educable might be compared to the attempt to write—which is always somewhat above our wills

 

Here the will is defined in terms of ‘understanding’ and the senses, ‘daily life in house and street’

 

Thus the educable [and the need for education] tied up with recognition of where we are already educated: so education becomes this recognition, acknowledgement (cavell?), the need and means to reach this recognition. Understanding that it is involved in a forgetting (wordsworth echo, intimations ode)

Emerson’s views on spirit and the education of the soul would be one analogue.

The one he goes on to develop is the political/hisotrical: the war

 

War has created a ‘new enthusiasm’ and a place where we have ‘abandoned ourselves to the current’

 

Impossible to extricate oneself:

 

 

“Self-Possession” (1858, natural method of mental philosophy)

Keywords: joyful reader, books, thought, love

 

Overall: See here a good example of the neglected implications/contradictions of ‘self-reliance’—here tied to intellect: that self-possession is self-surrender (129); that our original thinking implies a reception, and something above our will.

This lecture at the end reiterates the nature of thought and implications of reception.

 

128: our thought is waiting for us; I can no more managae the thoughts that come into my head.

Educational implication from this: “a kind of absurdity in offering rules when all we can do must be done for us”

 

So, no rules or method; other than perhaps a version of learning metonymy—which here is a kind of love/attention/humble service to that which is near or parallel [echoes here of the way Cavell talks about E’s interest in nextness]

128: healthy mind lies parallel to the currents of nature.

 

Ties this view of thought earlier in essay to reading and the problem of books.

118: tis reader that makes book

 

Problem with books: a body and soul is only a “momentary fixation”

 

124: no man can write but one book

View here of a ‘monotone’ that reflects one mind/power; versus a monotone that is an excess of individualism

 

127: threads that spin from a thought to a fact…weaving into rich webs

 

Lecture can be used to point up the paradox/contradiction of Emerson: originality and quotation—no simple view of individual. And the problem of developing a view of education from this understanding of intellect (lack of control)