{"id":1316,"date":"2008-05-10T21:35:29","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T02:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2008-05-10T21:37:09","modified_gmt":"2008-05-11T02:37:09","slug":"a-poet-b-philosopher-pick-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1316","title":{"rendered":"(a) poet, (b) philosopher; pick one"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This judgment of Ralph Waldo Emerson is reported by Julia Ward Howe in her <em>Reminiscences: 1819-1899<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Theodore Parker once said to me, &#8216;I do not consider Emerson a philosopher, but a poet lacking the accomplishment of rhyme.&#8217; &#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Coming from Parker, who could at least pretend to be a philosopher\/theologian, that&#8217;s a fairly harsh thing to say. After she reports Parker&#8217;s <em>bon mot<\/em>, Howe, who considered herself a poet, goes on to add her own judgment:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This may not be altogether true, but it is worth remembering&#8230;. The deep intuitions, the original and startling combinations, the sometimes whimsical beauty of his illustrations,&#8211; all these belong rather to the domain of poetry than to that of philosophy&#8230;. Despite his rather defective sense of rhythm, his poems are divine snatches of melody&#8230;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I think Howe and Parker are right: Emerson is more of a poet than a philosopher. Since Emerson remains the most important philosopher\/theologian of North American Unitarianism, that has some interesting implications for who we are today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This judgment of Ralph Waldo Emerson is reported by Julia Ward Howe in her Reminiscences: 1819-1899: &#8220;Theodore Parker once said to me, &#8216;I do not consider Emerson a philosopher, but a poet lacking the accomplishment of rhyme.&#8217; &#8221; Coming from Parker, who could at least pretend to be a philosopher\/theologian, that&#8217;s a fairly harsh thing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[356,177,70,203],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology","tag-julia-ward-howe","tag-ralph-waldo-emerson","tag-theodore-parker","tag-unitarian-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}