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Russell Goodman, (505) 277-4024 Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821

March 1, 2002

UNM DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY CHAIR PUBLISHED IN THE ON-LINE STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY

University of New Mexico Department of Philosophy Chair Russell Goodman recently published an entry on Ralph Waldo Emerson in the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a reference work of entries maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field.

“It’s been an honor to be selected to write this entry,” said Goodman. “I did one last year on the American philosopher William James. It provides me a chance to reach a wider audience than I do with my books and articles, which are read by scores, even hundreds of people, but far fewer than are reading these encyclopedia entries.

“In the last five months alone, my James entry was accessed almost 6,000 times; and in the six weeks since my Emerson entry appeared on line, more than 1,200 people have read it.”

Contributions to the Encyclopedia are solicited by invitation from a member of the board of editors, who are selected in consultation with the Stanford Department of Philosophy. In Goodman’s case, the invitation came from Allen Wood, a member of the Stanford Philosophy Department and an expert on 19th century philosophy. Because of the careful selection and review process, the entries for the encyclopedia are a who’s who of experts from various fields of philosophy.

Because the encyclopedia is a dynamic one, it can be responsive to new research, for it can change at any time with the addition of new entries or the modification of existing entries. All entries and updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished editorial board before they are made public.

An American essayist, poet, and popular philosopher, Emerson (1803-82) began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston, but achieved worldwide fame as a lecturer and the author of such essays as “Self-Reliance,” “History,” “The Over-Soul,” and “Fate.” Drawing on English and German Romanticism, Neoplatonism, Kantianism, and Hinduism, Emerson developed a metaphysics of process, an epistemology of moods, and an “existentialist” ethics of self-improvement.

Emerson influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history and the critique of Christianity.
Goodman’s Emerson entry can be accessed at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson.

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