Ralp Waldo Emerson as a philosopher

Penning a great number of poems, articles and essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson who lived in 1803-1882 is one of the most distinctive milestones of American literary and intellectual history. Emerson with his friends Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and Amos Bronson Alcott etc. played very important role in the emergence and development of transcendentalism in the United States. His ideas contribute to American pragmatism as well as transcendentalism. Emerson becomes a source of inspiration for the then term scientists and his successor philosophers. He is a prolific philosopher in the fields of self-reliance and individualism. Both prominent western and eastern philosophers are sources for Emerson effected and effecting. While he deals with German idealism and British empiricism, he concerns about eastern philosophy, especially Indian one. Placing the main skeleton if his philosophy on transcendentalism, Emerson pays attention to the three main branches of philosophy – epistemology, ontology and ethics and expresses his ideas in his essays authored. In this sense, presenting a wide range of writings varying from epistemology to ethics, from ontology to aesthetics provides his readers an opportunity for a better understanding. In this study it will be argued the contributions of Ralph Waldo Emerson to philosophy especially to the history of American thought.