Ralph Waldo Emerson and his disciple, Henry David Thoreau, claimed to be individualists. They attacked the dominant religious, political, and cultural values of American society. Emerson's and Thoreau's apparent non-conformity in their social relations actually depended upon a rigid conformity to what they conjectured to be the "divine influence." Their dogmatic adherence to this supernatural supposed source of knowledge sets their philosophy in opposition to rationality and genuine self-reliance.
Emerson and Thoreau ostensibly championed the principle of non-conformity as applied to the individual's relationship to society. "Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist," Emerson once declared. "The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think is right," added Thoreau in his famous essay on "Civil Disobedience."
To their credit, Emerson and Thoreau not only proclaimed to be non-conformists in the abstract, but widely applied non-conformism in practice. They opposed government control over the lives of individuals; Thoreau disobeyed laws he believed to be unjust as a matter of principle. Emerson and Thoreau believed that individuals should reject routines, customs, and obligations imposed by society. They disdained what they regarded as superficial social relationships maintained by pointless conversation. They sought to get the most out of life by living it largely from within.
On the surface, Emerson and Thoreau appear to have been model individualists. But underneath the surface, the their philosophy was rooted in anti-individualist religious doctrines. They called themselves "transcendentalists," meaning that they believed in abandoning the material world and abandoning rational thought in order to reach some higher state of consciousness through spiritual connection.
They believed that individuals had a direct connection to spiritual enlightenment from within. They referred to this spiritual influence as "divine law," "instinct," "intuition," "God," "flashes of light from heaven," etc. Emerson and Thoreau believed that it was everyone's duty to surrender their own rationality and put their faith in this alleged influence. "The test of the true faith," Emerson said, "should be its power to charm and command the soul...so commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying." They envisioned a society in which everyone took their orders from this divine mind--a society, therefore, in which everyone conformed to a single set of beliefs and values handed down from the heavens.
It is ironic that, in encouraging individuals to break away from social norms, Emerson and Thoreau also urged individuals to mindlessly obey the will of a supposed God. If Emerson had made the relationship between conformity and nonconformity in his philosophy explicit, he might have said, "Whoso would be a nonconformist must first conform to God."
Transcendentalism as a philosophy is incompatible with genuine individualism. Nevertheless, individualists can profit from studying the works of Emerson and Thoreau. Many of their ideas, although they were derived from false premises, are still relevant and inspiring. If Emerson and Thoreau had applied their non-conformist principles to the functioning of man's mind, they might well have been the fathers of modern individualism.
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