Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ralph Waldo Emerson remains a central literary voice of American culture because he gave lasting expression to its most fundamental and widely shared liberal values. Liberalism is a form of civilization, a set of values, a culture, a way of representing and living in the world. This is an exposition of Emerson's writings as a contribution to the theory and practice of liberal culture. It looks at Emerson's body of work within the classical liberal contexts that shaped its general political-cultural outlook--the libertarian-liberalism of John Locke, the Scottish Enlightenment, the American founders, and the American Whigs. It considers Emerson's distinctive elaborations of foundational liberal values--progress, reason, work, property, limited government, rights, civil society, liberty, commerce, and empiricism. In addition to Emerson's journals and lectures, it provides commentary on many of Emerson's most celebrated published works, including Nature, the "Divinity School Address," "History," "Compensation," "Experience," the political addresses of the early 1840s, "An Address . . . on . . . The Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies," Representative Men, English Traits, and The Conduct of Life.

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