This book gives the first complete, fully historicized account of Emerson's metaphysics of cause and effect and its foundational position in his philosophy as a whole. Joseph Urbas proposes an intellectual biography of Emerson the metaphysician but also the life-story of a concept synonymous, in the Transcendentalist period, with life itself—the story of the principle at the origin of all being and change.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Introduction
Chapter One: The Historical Background of Emerson's Metaphysics: The Ontological Turn, 1820-1850
Chapter Two: The Making of a Metaphysician
Chapter Three: Fashions in Emerson's Intellectual Milieu: Enthusiasms over the Cause
Chapter Four: Controversies within New England Christianity: Arguments over the Cause
Chapter Five: Emerson among the Causationists
Chapter Six: Causationism and Method in the Late Emerson
Conclusion
Annex - Causa Causarum: A Representative Sampling of References in the Emerson Corpus
