Mooc learning: Please watch and finish the Mooc lessons of 5-7 on Romanticism.
Reading: Please read the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Self-reliance, and Annabel Lee.
Raising questions and giving your view: Since AI is good at searching and answering questions, the vital ability for humans nowadays is to give instructions and cultivate your critical thinking ability. So each group should raise at least 4 questions for each piece of work and share your reasons and views at next week’s group seminar.
In Self-Reliance, Emerson opens with the Latin imperative "Ne te quæsiveris extra" ("Do not seek outside yourself"), which encapsulates the text's core philosophy: truth resides within, not in external validation. My question is how the text manifests this idea. From my perspective, intuition is the most crucial element—trusting one's own thoughts and daring to voice them. Emerson warns against surrendering to the influence of "bards and sages," arguing that imitation is not just limitation but "suicide". To rely on past wisdom uncritically is to erase one's individuality, for "envy is ignorance… imitation is suicide". True self-trust requires rejecting conformity, even if it means standing alone.
Emerson illustrates this through the example of great minds—Moses, Plato, or Milton—who triumphed because they spoke their "latent conviction" rather than echoing others. Society, however, pressures individuals to conform, breeding what Emerson calls "foolish consistency". Yet the self-reliant person must resist. For instance, Emerson praises the nonconformity of a child or an artist who creates without apology: "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius".
Moreover, self-reliance brings joy—not through external rewards but the act of creation itself. As Emerson writes, a person feels "relieved and happy when he has put his heart into his work and done his best". This aligns with his metaphor of the "divine idea" each person embodies. By honoring our inner voice, we fulfill our unique role in the universe. Thus, Self-Reliance doesn't just preach individualism; it frames authenticity as a moral duty, where intuition is sacred and imitation a betrayal of the self.