| | Part 1:
(Anne Bradstreet)I came to the New World and faced many hardships. I could have returned to Britain and lived comfortably, but I chose to remain and make a life for myself in the wilderness. There was sickness, lack of food, and primitive living conditions in Salem of 1630, yet I struggled and raised eight children. And, in my free time, I bucked the conventions for women by writing poetry instead of knitting.
(Ben Franklin)You did, indeed. We must respect you for this. It was those such as yourself who gave meaning to the term, “Puritan work ethic.” Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of your philosophy which bother me. You wouldn’t mind, would you, if I ask you about them?
(Anne Bradstreet)Well, if I can survive the deaths of three grandchildren, a daughter-in-law, and the burning of my house, I think I can cope with what you wish to ask me. Please go ahead.
(Ben Franklin)That’s just it, my dear Mrs. Bradstreet. You accept these tragedies with a stoicism that seems uncommon for most humans. You really seem to rely on God’s will and an unshakable faith that things will work out in heaven. Yet still, unlike some Christians, you do for yourself. Your behavior embodies that statement I included in my “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” that God helps those who help themselves. In light of all the tragedies you suffered, even though you did work hard, do you think God has been just to you?
(Anne Bradstreet)I think God is punishing me for loving life so much. I should not be so happy with material things like the home that burned. And, I love my grandchildren too much. We humans are not suppose to be this happy here on earth. God is preparing me for the afterlife. It’s as I said in my poem, “The Flesh and the Spirit,” “If I of heaven may have my fill,/ Take thou the world, and all that will.”
(Ben Franklin)That’s a little sad. Poor Richard also says that those who live on hope will die fasting. My friend Jefferson, who was inspired by Locke, wrote that all men (meaning all humans) have right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So, that assumes we are not on this earth just to be miserable, unless being miserable makes one happy. And, even Calvin thought God rewarded people with material goods.
(Anne Bradstreet) I so disagree with Calvin. We are not on earth to gather material goods. Spiritual things are so much better.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)I couldn’t agree with you more there, Mrs. Bradstreet. My friend, Henry David Thoreau and I have been spreading the word about a philosophy called Transcendentalism, which is a new kind of Idealism. We place more value on the universal, on the essence which we all share, then on the material. You should see how Henry lives on just bare necessities in the woods. However, we also wonder if you don’t put too much emphasis on the written word, the Bible. Our philosophy advocates thinking for one’s self, being self-reliant.
(Anne Bradstreet)I have meditated on these things, and in “Meditations Divine and Moral,” I said:
| Quote: | A ship that bears much sail, and little ballast, is easily overset; and that man, whose head hath great abilities, and his heart little or no grace, is in danger of foundering.
The finest bread has the least bran; the purest honey, the least wax; and the sincerest Christian, the least self-love. |
(Ben Franklin)And, I repeat that that is so sad, that you don’t love yourself. You should. You are a very industrious person. Poor Richard would love you. We love you, but you don’t love yourself.
(Emerson)I agree with Franklin here. If we are going to be self-reliant, then we need to think that the self is okay. It just that knowing one’s self and knowing nature are really the same. I’d say, Mrs. Bradstreet, you do know yourself. That is why you wrote poetry even though some of your neighbors disapproved. You were your own person and proud of it.
(Anne Bradstreet)Yes, but I could only go so far. I did live in an environment where people did have some expectations. It wasn’t as bad as Hawthorne made it out to be, but there were rules and standards. We had town meetings and democratic rule, but we couldn’t just refuse to go along with some things, like Henry David Thoreau did.
(Emerson)That’s true. I wouldn’t even go as far as he did, disobeying the law. I’ve criticized the law but never just disobeyed it on principle. Few people have.
(Ben Franklin)I did. Many of us broke the law on principle to win a revolution against Britain. Don’t forget. If we would have been caught, we would have been hung as traitors.
(Henry David Thoreau)Yes, and I am so grateful to you and Jefferson and Locke for making clear that the proper function of a government is to serve the people, not the other way around. And, I submit that when a government does not have the consent of the governed, it has no more authority over those governed. That was the reason for the revolution against Great Britain, and that’s why I refused to pay my taxes. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
(Nick)Yes, and that last statement was used by Gandhi and again by Martin Luther King Jr. You did have an impact on the world, Henry.
I’d like to thank all of you for visiting my messageboard today. We’ll have more to discuss later, I’m sure. At this time, I'd like to see if others lurking on my board will weigh in on this discussion.
Bis bald,
Nick
Part 2:
(Nick)Hi all! We’re back. Last week we had an “outstanding” discussion between our guests here: Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Professor Olafson said it was “fun to read.”
(Anne Bradstreet)Please tell Professor Olafson thank you. I am certainly happy to be here and have this discussion also. I never got to know these other gentlemen. They didn’t come along until I was long gone.
(Nick)That’s true. As a Puritan pilgrim, you lived from 1612 to 1672. The next closest celebrity who is present here is Benjamin Franklin, who lived from 1706 to 1790.
(Ben Franklin)Yes, and I was gone a few years before these gentlemen, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. I knew about Anne Bradstreet. She was the first American poet. I’m proud to be in her presence and also happy to meet all of you who came after me. Do people really remember little old me? I was never a president like Washington, Jefferson, and Adams.
(Nick)Well, of course they remember you. Your picture is on our 100 dollar bills. They remember you as an inventor of the Franklin Stove, a discoverer of electricity from flying a kite, an editor of popular publications, an ambassador, a delegate from Pennsylvania, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
(Ben Franklin)Well, good, as long as they don’t remember how I fell asleep once in one of those continental congressional meetings, I guess I’m okay.
(Nick)I think they also remember you as a very industrious man with a great sense of humor. We still quote things you put in Poor Richard’s almanac. And, like everyone here, you stood for individualism and self-reliance.
(Anne Bradstreet)Well, some people here might say I relied on God.
(Ben Franklin)Yes, you say you did, but we still love you. You worked hard and overcame much. And, as you said in our last meeting, not all Puritans were intolerant zealots, as Hawthorne describes. I read “Pilgrim’s Progress” and was much impressed.
(Anne Bradstreet)Do you believe in God, Mr. Franklin?
(Ben Franklin)Yes, but not the traditional god of the Bible. People call me a deist.
(Emerson)We also believe in God in a way but not the way of the Bible. I shocked a group of divinity students once when I announced that there was divinity in man and humanity in Jesus.
(Thoreau)Yes, when I was in jail, someone asked me if I believed in God. I explained the old argument from design. You know, the one that says if one finds a watch on a stump in the forest, one can assume there is human intelligence behind it. Things like that don’t occur in nature. However, the universe as a whole has design much more intricate than in that watch. So, this also implies intelligence.
(Ben Franklin)But didn’t you ever read Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion?” That pretty much destroys the argument from design.
(Emerson)Yes, but Hume was an ultimate skeptic, and you know how ultimate skepticism is ultimately paradoxical. Transcendentalism goes beyond all that rationalism and empiricism of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. We like what Kant did when he brought back some Platonism, talking about intuition and transcendent truth.
(Ben Franklin)Yes, but your brand of idealism, Transcendentalism, isn’t quite as technical as Kant’s philosophy, is it? You don’t believe in the categorical imperative which defines good as opposed to evil.
(Emerson)That’s right. I don’t think it’s necessary to define evil. If there is divine in all of us, then we can just concentrate on moving toward the good.
(Anne Bradstreet)But isn’t that why some of your contemporaries like Hawthorne, Melville, and Henry James disagree with you? They would rather accept obvious evil and work to overcome it. Denying its existence seems naïve, overly optimistic.
(Thoreau)This could be, Mrs. Bradstreet, but at least it’s better than considering yourself evil because of the sin of Adam and all that Hogwash in the Bible. I’m sorry if that offends you, but we do believe in thinking for ourselves, not just relying on some sacred book.
(Anne Bradstreet)Oh, it’s okay. I’m tougher than I look. I know that your rejection of the Bible is part of your rebellious nature, like Ben Franklin and the revolutionaries who rebelled against Britain. We’re all sort of rebellious around here. I don’t expect everyone to think like me, but you would have had some problems in my community at my time.
(Ben Franklin)Yes, and let’s explore this a little more. Disagreement is accepted more these days than it was in back in Anne Bradstreet’s day. The two of you had some fallings out, didn’t you?
(Emerson)Well, yes, I criticized my dear friend Henry because he seemed to have no ambition. He worked only as much as he needed to work and spent the rest of his time writing.
(Thoreau)Yes, well, some of us march to the beat of a different drummer. I thought you spent too much time concerned with teaching others to be self-reliant. Why not just be self-reliant?
(Emerson)We may have disagreed, but we remained friends, and I eulogized Henry when he died.
(Nick)That’s right. You two lived at the same time, but Henry was much younger than you, Mr. Emerson, and he died before you did.
(Emerson)He was a great friend of the family, and, as you pointed out last week, Mr. Otani, some of his words did impact the world.
(Nick)Well, I think this is shaping up into another successful discussion. There’s still a lot more I’d like to cover, like your relationship with Carlyle, Mr. Emerson. And, there are other people who came after you, like the Pragmatists who changed a little of what folks like Franklin and Jefferson put into the Declaration.
(Emerson)Do we have a little more time? I don’t mind talking about Carlyle. He was a great individualist.
(Nick)But he was also a racist. He talked about forced labor for newly freed slaves. He and J.S. Mill went around and around about that.
(Emerson)He believed in the value of work, even if forced. Can you fault him for that?
(Ben Franklin)Careful, Ralph, he who gives up liberty in favor of another pleasure deserves neither pleasure nor liberty.
(Nick)Yes, and the pragmatists, like William James, John Dewey, and Oliver Wendel Holmes did a little to undermine the natural law theory that Jefferson put into the Declaration. Instead of looking for natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the law of the land sort of shifted to consensus and common law or tradition. People don’t think about natural rights much anymore. Most people think it’s just a human construct and has no transcendent meaning. Today, we even beyond that. We’re in a period of post-modernism where many people think everything is relative, like back to Hume and Protagoras.
(Emerson)Is that what Transcendentalism has developed into?
(Nick)It seems so. However, there are a few people like me who rail against complete relativism and try remind people of the principles in the Declaration, that all humans are, as humans, equal, and we all have an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is, after all, the best way to be self-reliant, to have a human right to do whatever we want as long as we respect the rights of others to do the same.
(Ben Franklin)That sounds good to me. It’s what we fought a war with Great Britain to get. It’s a shame people have drifted from that ideal.
(Anne Bradstreet)I think it sounds good. Certainly women, then, would be allowed to write poetry.
(Thoreau)Perhaps then there wouldn’t be unjust taxes, and I wouldn't have to go to jail.
(Emerson)As long as everyone is self-reliant, it sounds good to me. Perhaps you should go talk with all these pragmatists and post-modern relativists.
(Nick)I do. Believe me, I do.
bis bald,
Nick
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