"Self-Reliance"

     "Self-Reliance and the Life of the Mind" is a literary criticism by George Kateb.  In the article, Kateb analyses Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, "Self-Reliance."  The essay by Emerson, in summary, is of life.  It speaks of how in life you come to a point where you pretty much have a gigantic epiphany and realize you cannot just keep living for yourself, but at the same time you can't just do what society tells you to, either.  You have to find the balance between maintaining your identity, but widening your vision to more than just your own needs.  Kateb has mostly nice things to say about what Emerson wrote.  He agrees with a few things while he also contradicts a few things, as well.  
     "Emerson thinks that every important value, principle, idea (or derivative practice or institution) is permanently indispensable for life, even though any may be at odds with any other."  Here, Kateb analyses what they essay has to say about personality traits.  Emerson's opinion: every little idea, education, lesson, etc. is completely necessary for life, despite the fact certain ideas, lessons, or eduaction may not agree with the another.  He still believes that they are indispensable.  The criticism continues on to call them "forces by whose antagonism we exist."  Kateb explains this that we need to have antagonism and contradictions to learn.  I agree with this.  If we simply had people telling us what was right and wrong and we all agreed with it completely and consistently, what would we learn really?
     "Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them."  This is taken directly from Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance."  I really like this quote a lot.  I completely agree with what it has to say.  What does it have to say, you ask?  It compares this thing we call "society" a wave.  No matter what, the wave will always keep moving, but the actually material and things that make up the wave will continually die off and be replaced.  The people, things, places, ideas, etc. that make up our "wave" right now will eventually die off and be replaced with something possibly very similar or completely different.  "To repeat: we must not expect anything simple when we take up Emerson on self-reliance. The point put in academic language is that democratic individuality is nothing simple. What, then, more explicitly, is self-reliance? What is reliance on oneself, what does it come to?"  This is taken from Kateb's analysis of Emerson's essay.  This can be related to Emerson's analogy of society and a wave.  We are not independent.  We just aren't.  We have all grown up in a world where we are all balled together into one big ball of society.  So what is Self-Reliance?
     "Self-Reliance and the Life of the Mind" by George Kateb overall gives Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" a good reputation.  "I think that Emerson's answer is yes, after all is said; but he says a lot to make that conclusion uneasy. It turns out, as I hope to suggest later, that though no worldly activity, in Emerson's account, manifests the highest self—reliance, two personal relationships—love and friendship—are intimately bound with it."  In the end we see that self-reliance is pretty simple.  It comes down to the simple things in life.  It's not really a forty page essay or a thirty-five page criticism on that essay.  It's the pure, true, and just plain simple things in life.   



Works Cited 

Kateb, George. "Infobase Learning - Login." Infobase Learning - Login. Blooms Literary Reference Online, 2003. Web. 07 Dec. 2012. 
Merson, Ralph W. Self-Reliance. Rep. Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2012.