By way of preface to a comment I shall make in a separate entry, below, following is an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self Reliance":
"But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
"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. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
"But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
"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. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
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Re: Foolish Consistency
Thu, March 8, 2007 - 2:34 PM[Typographical note: This web site does not accommodate italicization, for which I will substitute CAPITALIZATION.]
In his famous adage "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," just what is Emerson attacking? Not, I think, consistence IN GENERAL, for consistency is essential to truth--necessary, though not sufficient, for it, and central to the search for it: A thinker tests the soundness of his outlook by probing it for inconsistency, which will indicate the presence of error (if two propositions are inconsistent, one of them is false). I believe Emerson is criticizing SEQUENTIAL, as opposed to SIMULTANEOUS, consistence, as follows.
Both wise and foolish consistency involve the impetus for agreement among our opinions. The difference lies in the set of opinions with respect to which harmony is sought: in the first, it is the PRESENT body, in which our standard is truth, and we discard old notions as we come to see that they conflict with it; whereas, in the second, it is the SERIES, wherein, to avoid having to admit that we erred, our principle is conformity with our past assertions, and we suppress new ideas at odds with them. In other words, the former strives for the truth, even at the cost of appearing fallible; the latter strives for the appearance of infallibility, even at the cost of the truth . . . and, by thus inhibiting the quest for truth, foolish consistency constricts the mind.
Addendum: A corollary to the foregoing is that vital to the pursuit of truth, is self-criticism.
– Richard J. Eisner (3/8/2007; 1-818-343-0123; rjeisner@ix.netcom.com) -
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Re: Foolish Consistency
Sat, March 10, 2007 - 4:40 PMHere's some more of Emerson (Self-Reliance) to provide additional context:
"The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
"But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
"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. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day...."
Emerson is exhorting his readers not only to allow for changes of mind as conditions require (e.g., from the introduction of new facts) and to be wary of a priori metaphysical dogmatism, but also and more importantly to take our own subjectivity and its intuitions seriously. This is the self-reliance that matters.
Emerson's meditations were not ineffectual; in articulating his thoughts on self-reliance, he is providing not only a set of pragmatic maxims, but also his methodological key to achieving the depth and confidence necessary for a self-reliance that is grounded in personal truth, rather than in hearsay, expectations of others, and abstractions of random provenance.
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