The American Scholar

Emerson’s argument in "The American Scholar" still holds true today.


Emerson’s argument is, in the past people learned a variety of skills but now they focus on one specific job and define themselves by whatever job they have. People today only do one thing and only learn the skills associated with this thing. “Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all.” Which means we shouldn’t be putting ourselves into a situation where we only learn one thing or have one job, but we should branch out and learn other skills. People don’t need to do other things, but have lost hope in learning other skills by doing so.

People are labeling themselves and other people with their job. For example if someone was a doctor, you would probably think they were extremely smart, and if someone worked at Wal-Mart you would probably think that they are uneducated. If we think of people by their skills and ideas instead of their job we’ll be able to figure out who they really are, and we can define them as smart or uneducated.