The present writer intentionally responds to prompts in forms that he hopes are unexpected.
(Lights slowly rise. An image of Walden Pond shrouded in early morning mist is projected across the back of an empty stage)
Voice: How is the cultivation of self-reliance (in Emerson) a continuation of the Enlightenment tradition? Compare Emerson with at least one other thinker from the course.
(Enter Left Ken Ilgunas. He stares at the image of Walden pond in wonder and then sits, back to the audience facing the pond.)
Kant: (Off stage loudly) The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude!
(Enter Right Emmanuel Kant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau in animated discussion. Ilgunas stands to meet them.)
Kant: Have the courage to use your own understanding! Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.
(Ilgunas and Thoreau recognize each other and sit down facing the pond.)
Emerson: But Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Kant: Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men gladly remain immature for life.
Emerson: Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Kant: There will always be a few who think for themselves, a public can only achieve enlightenment slowly. A revolution may well put an end to autocratic despotism, as in this Massachusetts, but it will never produce a true reform in ways of thinking. Instead, new prejudices, like the ones they replaced, will serve as a leash to control the great unthinking mass. If I have a book to have understanding in place of me, a spiritual adviser to have a conscience for me, a doctor to judge my diet for me, and so on, I need not make any efforts at all to think for myself.
Emerson: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
Kant: Yes, it is difficult for each separate individual to work his way out of the immaturity which has become almost second nature to him.
Emerson: Yet, there is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.
Kant: In that we disagree, I believe that a philosopher should study Thought rather than Reality.
Emerson: I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me. I can very confidently announce one or another law, which throws itself into relief and form, but I am too young yet by some ages to compile a code.
(Lights dim on Emerson and Kant. Spotlight on Thoreau and Ilgunas who rise and walk Front Right in the spotlight.)
Emerson: ( As Ilgunas and Thoreau speak, Emerson softly repeats these lines over and over) We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
Ilgunas: I’ve read your books. Thank you, they opened a path for me that would have been harder to find without them.
Thoreau: How so?
Ilgunas: I was pushing carts at Home Depot to pay off college debt, and living a life of quiet
Thoreau: desperation? Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Ilgunas: I decided to free myself of debt by moving to the Alaskan woods and living by your principles of Economy.
Thoreau: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
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The Skin of our Teeth, Wilder
The Walden on Wheels, Ilgunas, 2013
(Lights slowly rise. An image of Walden Pond shrouded in early morning mist is projected across the back of an empty stage)
Voice: How is the cultivation of self-reliance (in Emerson) a continuation of the Enlightenment tradition? Compare Emerson with at least one other thinker from the course.
(Enter Left Ken Ilgunas. He stares at the image of Walden pond in wonder and then sits, back to the audience facing the pond.)
Kant: (Off stage loudly) The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude!
(Enter Right Emmanuel Kant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau in animated discussion. Ilgunas stands to meet them.)
Kant: Have the courage to use your own understanding! Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.
(Ilgunas and Thoreau recognize each other and sit down facing the pond.)
Emerson: But Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Kant: Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men gladly remain immature for life.
Emerson: Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Kant: There will always be a few who think for themselves, a public can only achieve enlightenment slowly. A revolution may well put an end to autocratic despotism, as in this Massachusetts, but it will never produce a true reform in ways of thinking. Instead, new prejudices, like the ones they replaced, will serve as a leash to control the great unthinking mass. If I have a book to have understanding in place of me, a spiritual adviser to have a conscience for me, a doctor to judge my diet for me, and so on, I need not make any efforts at all to think for myself.
Emerson: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
Kant: Yes, it is difficult for each separate individual to work his way out of the immaturity which has become almost second nature to him.
Emerson: Yet, there is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.
Kant: In that we disagree, I believe that a philosopher should study Thought rather than Reality.
Emerson: I know better than to claim any completeness for my picture. I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me. I can very confidently announce one or another law, which throws itself into relief and form, but I am too young yet by some ages to compile a code.
(Lights dim on Emerson and Kant. Spotlight on Thoreau and Ilgunas who rise and walk Front Right in the spotlight.)
Emerson: ( As Ilgunas and Thoreau speak, Emerson softly repeats these lines over and over) We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.
Ilgunas: I’ve read your books. Thank you, they opened a path for me that would have been harder to find without them.
Thoreau: How so?
Ilgunas: I was pushing carts at Home Depot to pay off college debt, and living a life of quiet
Thoreau: desperation? Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Ilgunas: I decided to free myself of debt by moving to the Alaskan woods and living by your principles of Economy.
Thoreau: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
------------------------------------------------------------------
The Skin of our Teeth, Wilder
The Walden on Wheels, Ilgunas, 2013
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