“A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time,” and the Divinity of Nature:
Emerson’s Proto-Process Metaphysics in his Nature (1836)
Keywords:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosophy, American religious thought, Process philosophyAbstract
In this article, I offer reasons why we should use the tools and frameworks of process philosophy and clarify the metaphysics of nature present in Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature (1836). Part of the reason for engaging his thought in this way is to return Emerson to philosophical status within contemporary philosophy and to deny the central theme of many Emersonian projects that he is primarily a poet and a writer. Instead, uncovering Emerson’s ontological insights allow for us to develop a conception of philosophy that unites the poetic and the philosophical in the process of experiencing nature itself and discern exactly what he meant by discovering our original relation with the cosmos. Specifically, I discern that nature and spirit are a co-extensive dyadic structure that unfold in a structure very analogous to some elements in phenomenology and process thought. Next, the implication of this unfurling and proto-process philosophical framework helps explain the early moves Emerson made against traditional Christianity in Nature and simultaneously what our relation to both persons and the Divine amount to in his earliest systematic treatise.
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