Stoicism, Skepticism, and Hope Theme Analysis

One of the primary themes of Emerson’s “Experience” is limitation. Emerson’s theory of the individual and his or her subjective experience of the world limits the sphere of human knowledge and agency. Although Emerson himself does not employ the term stoicism—which refers to an ancient philosophical school that sought calm and well-being by withdrawing from the world into the self—the worldview he develops in “Experience” is based on the fundamental idea expounded by the ancient Stoics: one should recognize and appreciate what is under one’s control and what is outside of it. Emerson therefore urges his readers to be skeptical of any efforts to predict the future through science and emphasizes the impossibility of ever truly knowing another human being. Yet, despite Emerson’s emphasis in the first half of “Experience” on a lonely skepticism, in the second half of the essay he hopefully suggests strategies for overcoming the limitations of the subject and bridging the gap that separates individuals from the world.

At the beginning of “Experience,” Emerson argues that individuals are detached from reality. People spend much of their time in anticipation of the future or reminiscence about the past. They have some sense that the most real experience is anywhere else but the present. Some of them will “court suffering” in order to find “the sharp peaks and edges of truth.” But Emerson insists that suffering is just as shallow as any other kind of experience of the world, for our “souls never touch their objects.” With the premature death of Waldo, his son, Emerson “seem[s] to have lost a beautiful estate,—no more.” His son was like any other kind of possession: essentially separate from Emerson himself. Misfortune, then, ultimately leaves Emerson “as it found [him],—neither better nor worse.” Just as souls never really make contact with the objects they experience, misfortune does not “touch” Emerson.

Because humans can never escape the bubble of their own experience, both nature and other people are fundamentally unknowable. Nature “does not like to be observed,” and instead of making humans privy to her workings, prefers us to “be her fools and playmates.” As a result, humans do not have the power to make firm contact with reality or with other people. Therefore “our relations to each other are oblique and casual.” One consequence of this is that “there is an optical illusion about every person we meet,” since, though we perceive them to be autonomous, in reality their experience and behavior is largely determined by their internal “temperament,” which is invisible to us when we encounter them. Another consequence is that efforts to predict the behavior of others, or of nature, through scientific laws, are ultimately in vain. Physicians who claim that they can predict a human character through the shape of the skull (phrenology) are in fact guilty of “impudent knowingness,” since each person is ultimately full of “inscrutable possibilities” that can never be known through science. The human being is too complicated to be theorized. “I accept the clangor and jangle of contrary tendencies,” Emerson writes. In general, “Life is a series of surprises” that cannot be predicted. “Nature hates calculators,” and the best way of life is the one that is more or less instinctual, the one that embraces chance. For “the individual is always mistaken” about what will happen in the future.

As a strategy to lessen the divide between individual and reality, Emerson encourages his reader to move away from reason and to immerse him- or herself in experience. Emerson urges his reader to stop searching for extreme ways of life or rare works of art, and instead to embrace what is right in front of them. People should not strive to be overly rational or overly sensual, since “the middle region of our being is the temperate zone.” This is the “equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry”—the narrow part of the human being through which these higher things become accessible. Instead of contemplating the inevitability of death (and the impossibility of bringing the dead back to life), as Emerson did in the first half of “Experience,” one should not “craze [oneself] with thinking” and instead “husband the moment.” One should accept the transience of human life, since “everything good is on the highway,” even in the realm of art. Emerson will not strive to see rare works of art or find rare books, but prefers to look at great and timeless works that are hung in the great public museums and to read “the commonest books,” such as the Bible, and literary works by Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. He will immerse himself in the ordinary, the normal, and the classic. Emerson hopes that, through relishing daily life, and appreciating the art that is easily accessible, his reader will learn once again how to simply live.

Emerson’s theory of the individual has important implications for the worldview he describes in “Experience.” The moral implication of this theory is a kind of stoicism. Because the individual only ever experiences the world and never makes direct contact with it, the individual is capable of a kind of stoic remove from his or her own life. For whenever one experiences misfortune, it is really an experience like any other—something that happens in the external world and which therefore does not directly affect the subject. The consequence of Emerson’s theory of the individual is a general skepticism. The fundamental separation from reality makes it impossible for us ever fully to understand how nature, or how our fellow human beings, behave. Efforts to predict the future are futile, and the best way to live life is to accept the fact that events are unpredictable. Ultimately, Emerson suggests that the best approach to life is to embrace the fact that human beings are always in between reason and sensual experience, and to inhabit the middle ground in all spheres of activity. The best way to live is simply to live, not to think about living.