The Mazeppist

A Transgressive Transcendentalist manifesto.

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Location: Dar ul-Fikr, Colorado, United States

Part Irish, part Dervish, ecstatic humanist, critical Modernist, transgressive Transcendentalist.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Emersonian Individualism


Emersonian individualism is neither antisocial nor imperial; it does not advocate withdrawal from society, nor does it seek to rule others. It is overwhelmingly concerned with the self-education and development of the individual, and convinced that there can be neither love nor society unless one first has a group of autonomous individuals. Emersonian self-reliance is, like the Stoic's self-respect, the necessary means to self-culture, to the development of the self. Insofar as it is a means to power it is only power over the self, not over others.

Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, 56.

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