Significance
While some critics like Harold Bloom place The Conduct of Life among Emerson's best work—Bloom calls it “a crucial last work for Americans”—it has only been paid little critical attention.
As The Conduct of Life is, in parts, thematically grouped around practical life issues (e.g. 'Power', 'Wealth'), it has been discussed as participating “in the aspirations of the contemporary conduct-of-life literature” while opening up possibilities of gender fluidity. Also, despite the stronger reconciliation between self and society compared to Emerson’s previous, more individualistic works, The Conduct of Life is in no way a one-sided affirmation of American society, especially 19th century capitalism. Rather, it can be seen as a holistic attempt to develop “principles for a good, natural, adequate conduct of life.” As the dialectic approach of these essays often fails to come to tangible conclusions, critics like Ellen Vellela have described the whole book as weakly structured and repetitive. Others argue that “rather than trying to dissolve the ambiguous tension of Emerson’s texts, the different arguments should be valued as a part of a dialectic that productively captures the friction of opposing poles.” In this way, “the workings of Emerson (…), as well as his aphoristic, succinct expressiveness could be characterized as Emersonian inceptions: getting us to start thinking, planting thoughts.“ Still others found an overarching unity of design to transcend the fragmentation of Emerson’s individual essays within the volume as a whole. More recent readings see Emerson as constructing an “ebb and flow within The Conduct of Life” that hints at transitionality as the “final reality of appearances.”
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Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.”
—Marlon Brando (b. 1924)
“Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)