The relevance of Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophies today - Research Paper Example

First, we get from Emerson that labor is really a reflection of virtue as well as knowledge, and the things that are bought and sold in the market if they are made with integrity find their usefulness, and their usefulness derives in essence from the craft, the skill, the knowledge, and the virtue of the craftsman. There is no cheating in nature and in the relations of men is what Emerson says. This is not vague speculation, but something that is seen in the concrete. For instance, in the world, the successful architect is the one who imbues his work with passion, skill, and the knowledge that he had gained both from experience and from his formal schooling.

The training that he received in school is something that he was able to acquire through diligence, careful application, and sacrifice: all virtuous qualities in a man which are distilled in order to acquire the knowledge to perform the work of the architect. Without these virtues and conscious self-application of the student, the architect does not appear. In the architect who lacks the passion for the work and who lacks the discipline and knowledge, the work is shoddy, the resulting house is of poor design, and in some form or other will fail to please.

Maybe the foundation will give way, or the measurements of some major building block of the house will not be accurate or fit for the construction. Therefore, the house as a whole may collapse from the weight of the lack of virtue and knowledge of the architect. In the short run, the architect may fool one poor householder out of his savings and build a shoddy house. In the long run though, the architect who is not really an architect but one in name only is headed for the poor house if not to jail.

He is a counterfeit architect in the sense that Emerson discusses. Emerson is saying that the universe is perfect in its constitution, and everything has its own fate. The work that is virtuous and knowledgeable gets its own positive reward while the work that is feigned and made with poor knowledge likewise gets its own shoddy reward, or punishment. Emerson makes the link between the work of humans and the compensation that he automatically gets for that work in ways that opens up the discussion to notions of work that is proper to a man, according to the talents bestowed upon him by the universe, more of which shall be discussed in the proceeding portions of this speech.

Emerson's theology is basically that the universe is just and operates on the law of instant rewards and instant compensation for the work that a man does. If the work is in accord with virtue and knowledge in short, then the rewards are that befitting the virtuous and knowledgeable man. There is a price for every single work that is done on earth, and the man is best who is able to derive the positive rewards of his work from work that is done in accordance with this law. The key is honest application of work, work that is done with the sincere application of the faculties that one is talented in, and at any rate that application, hard and true, yields the right fruits.

Emerson is saying essentially that the laws of compensation are not different from the laws that operate in the material universe, and in fact, they spring from the