The American Scholar

"The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future..." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar" (1837) The American Scholar (1837), is an address delivered by Ralph Waldo Emerson to the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Emerson's writing was focused on providing a philosophical framework for escaping European culture and building a new, distinctly American identity. This essay i...