Representative Men
Contributors: Pamela Shirmeister (Editor)
Publisher: Marsilio Publishers
Published: December 1995
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 229
ISBN-13: 9781568860152
Subjects: Historical - General; Biography / Autobiography
First sentence: It is natural to believe in great men.
Description: To find in this extraordinary book, Representative Men, an Emerson expounding the primacy of personality and heroic genius in six major figures of Western European civilization - Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Goethe - seems nothing short of anomalous.

Was Emerson reconsidering his own philosophical premises? Or is there a hidden agenda in this study that reflects on European phenomena and values? As the notion of the "representative" is becoming increasingly central to our national cultural debate, it seems of utmost importance to reexamine Emerson's meditations and seek in them a challenge to philosophy.