The third week will focus on Emerson's moral philosophy.

One way of thinking of that philosophy is as a contribution to the "virtue ethics" that runs through the Western tradition from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, through Aquinas, Montaigne, and Nietzsche.

On Tuesday I will lead a session on Emersonian virtues, focusing on the essays "Manners," "The Uses of Great Men," and "Montaigne: or the Skeptic." A complementary but distinct approach to Emerson's moral philosophy is taken by Stanley Cavell, who will join us for sessions on Thursday and Friday.

Cavell sees Emerson as part of a tradition of "moral perfectionism" in the West that is found as much in utilitarianism as in Kant, as much in Plato and Aristotle as in Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and William James. Perfectionism so understood is not a particular moral theory, then, but a dimension of many moral theories, in which ideas of conversation, education, and attraction to a "higher" or better life come to the fore. In his book Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: the Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago, 1988) Cavell finds exemplary expressions of moral perfectionism both in Plato's Republic, which charts a "journey of ascent," and in Emerson's "History" essay, which speaks of an "unattained but attainable self."

In our two sessions with Cavell we will consider Emerson's moral perfectionism as expressed in "The American Scholar," "Self-Reliance," "Experience," "Politics," and "Culture."

Emerson, "The American Scholar," "Self-Reliance," "Experience," "Politics," "Culture"; Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book IV, Chapter 3; Michel de Montaigne, "On Educating Children," "On Books," "On Experience," in Essays; Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, pp 1-32; Emerson's Transcendental Etudes (selections).