In 1841, American writer-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) published “Self-Reliance,” placing the ingenuity of the individual above an unquestioning acquiescence to the collective.
It appeared just before The Communist Manifesto ennobled victimhood of one collective and victimization of another. Emerson’s essay gloriously affirms the individual as a singular force for goodness, truth, and beauty. To him, a human represents a “divine idea” to be unleashed, not contained.
