Emerson and the Examined Life
    Address Given by Richard Geldard
    June 28, 2003   Faneuil Hall, Boston

Here in this Cradle of Freedom, our young nation began to frame the language of an authentic independence.  The founders, Adams and Jefferson in particular, articulated the two great principles upon which America was to form its national character: namely, the sovereignty of the individual and freedom of worship.  A half century later the eloquence of Ralph Waldo Emerson, our Founding Thinker, spelled out the elements of these two principles.  In effect, he clarified the experience of independence for us.  And at the core of his work, the very marrow of it, was the examined life.

Emerson himself proposes at the beginning of "Considerations by the Way" that there is very little we can do to help each other. Why? As he says, life has too many shifting moods and so much chance (or fate) in daily existence, that one person's experience seems to have little to do with another's. Is he right? Can we -- or rather -- can Emerson be a useful guide in the Conduct of Life?