The Conduct of Life - Significance

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.”