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Self-Reliance

and Other Essays

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Narrator Phil Paonessa

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Length 1 hour 22 minutes

Language English

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Summary
About the author
About the narrator

In an 1841 essay, American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a stirring call for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency and to follow their own instincts and ideas. It contains one of Emerson's most famous quotations: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Self-Reliance, possibly Emerson’s most famous essay, is an investigation into the nature of the “aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded.” It was first published in his 1841 collection, Essays: First Series. Emerson helped start the beginning of the Transcendentalist movement in America.

Philosophy Essays

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-nineteenth century. Although he began his career as a Unitarian minister, he gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism instead. Seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, he disseminated his thoughts through published essays and public lectures across the United States.

Phil Paonessa is a U.S. Army Veteran of the Vietnam era who works as an automotive-industry project engineer, a public speaker, an actor, a voice actor, and, formerly, a local-newspaper feature writer. The father of three adult children, he is a lifelong resident of Michigan, where he currently resides with his wife.