Representative Men

Overview

About a hundred and ninety pages, seven lectures Ralph Waldo Emerson first delivered in 1845 and subsequently revised and published in book form in 1850, addressing what Emerson frames as the proper use of great historical figures, arguing directly against treating them as objects of simple admiration or worship in favor of treating them as instructive, usable examples of capacities Emerson believed exist, in smaller measure, within every person who studies them. This opening methodological argument, developed in the book’s first essay, governs the six individual portraits that follow, each measuring a historically significant figure against both the specific power he embodies and his genuine, sometimes severe limitations.

The six figures Emerson selects, Plato, Emanuel Swedenborg, Michel de Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Napoleon Bonaparte and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, represent deliberately distinct types of human achievement, philosophy, mysticism, skepticism, poetry, practical worldly mastery and literary genius respectively, giving the collection’s overall structure a systematic quality beyond simple biographical admiration, treating each figure as representative of an entire category of human capacity rather than merely as an individually notable historical personage.

What happens

Uses of Great Men. The opening essay establishes Emerson’s central methodological argument directly: we need great men, he insists, not to worship from a position of permanent subordinate distance but to use, since studying an individual who has developed some particular human capacity to an unusual, exceptional degree reveals that capacity as latent, in smaller measure, within the ordinary reader as well, making genuine engagement with greatness a spur toward the reader’s own development rather than an invitation to passive admiration.

Plato, or the Philosopher. Emerson’s portrait of Plato praises his capacity to synthesize and unify the full range of human experience and inquiry into a single coherent philosophical vision, presenting Plato as representative of philosophy’s own highest ambition, comprehensive intellectual unification, while also noting the genuine limits of any single system’s capacity to fully capture reality’s actual complexity and variety.

Swedenborg, or the Mystic. The portrait of the Swedish mystic and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg examines a considerably more unusual and, for many readers, more difficult kind of genius, direct claimed spiritual and visionary insight, treating Swedenborg’s mysticism with genuine respect for its ambition while also registering real reservation about mysticism’s characteristic tendency toward rigid, overly systematic doctrine that resists the kind of ongoing openness Emerson valued in genuine intellectual and spiritual inquiry.

Montaigne, or the Skeptic. Emerson’s portrait of Montaigne treats sustained, genuinely honest skepticism as itself a rare and difficult intellectual achievement rather than as a failure of conviction, praising Montaigne’s willingness to remain genuinely uncertain rather than settling prematurely into false philosophical or religious certainty, a portrait many readers have found among the collection’s most sympathetic and most personally revealing of Emerson’s own intellectual temperament.

Shakespeare, or the Poet. The portrait of Shakespeare identifies representative range itself, an unmatched capacity to inhabit and give convincing voice to an enormous variety of distinct human types and perspectives without imposing any single fixed doctrine of his own onto the material, as Shakespeare’s distinctive and essentially unrepeated form of genius, a quality Emerson presents as poetry’s own highest possible achievement.

Napoleon, or the Man of the World. Emerson’s portrait of Napoleon, the collection’s harshest and most critical, credits him with an extraordinary practical genius, an unmatched capacity to perceive exactly what a given situation required and to act on that perception without hesitation, while arguing that this same genius, lacking any genuine higher moral principle to check or direct it, curdled steadily into pure self-interest and ultimately produced Napoleon’s own eventual downfall, a portrait that functions as the collection’s clearest cautionary counter-example to its otherwise generally admiring treatment of its subjects.

Goethe, or the Writer. The closing portrait of Goethe examines a considerably more contemporary figure, praising Goethe’s sheer range and productivity as a writer while offering a more measured, less purely celebratory assessment than several of the earlier portraits, closing the collection on a note of qualified rather than unreserved admiration.

How to read it

Read the opening essay’s methodological argument, greatness as something to be used rather than worshipped, as the interpretive key for every subsequent portrait; Emerson’s treatment of each figure consistently follows this pattern, genuine admiration for a specific demonstrated capacity combined with honest acknowledgment of real limitation, rather than settling into either simple hero-worship or dismissive criticism.

Pay particular attention to how differently Emerson treats his six subjects despite applying a consistent underlying method; Montaigne receives sustained sympathy, Napoleon receives the collection’s sharpest criticism, and tracking these varying judgments reveals what specific qualities Emerson valued most and found most wanting across different forms of human achievement.

Notice how the six selected figures collectively span philosophy, mysticism, skepticism, poetry, practical worldly action and literary range, a deliberately systematic selection that treats human greatness as manifesting across genuinely distinct categories of achievement rather than as a single unified quality different individuals simply possess to varying degrees.

Consider Emerson’s own self-reliance philosophy, developed most fully in his other essays, as directly continuous with this book’s central argument; treating great men as usable examples rather than objects of worship extends the same basic conviction that genuine authority and insight ultimately reside within the individual reader rather than in any external figure, however historically celebrated.

Read the Napoleon portrait specifically as the collection’s clearest cautionary counter-example, and consider what Emerson’s harsh judgment of purely practical genius lacking higher moral direction suggests about what he considered the necessary, non-negotiable component of any form of achievement genuinely worth calling great.

Questions it raises

• Does Emerson’s opening argument, that great men exist to be used rather than worshipped, hold up consistently across all six portraits, or does his own evident admiration for figures like Montaigne and Shakespeare sometimes slide back toward the kind of reverential treatment his stated method explicitly rejects?
• How does selecting six figures representing genuinely distinct categories of achievement, philosophy, mysticism, skepticism, poetry, practical action, literary range, shape the book’s overall argument compared to a collection organized around a single consistent type of greatness?
• What does Emerson’s uniquely harsh treatment of Napoleon, praising his practical genius while condemning its moral emptiness, suggest about what Emerson considered the essential, non-negotiable component distinguishing genuine greatness from mere effective capability?
• How does Emerson’s portrait of Montaigne, treating sustained honest skepticism as a genuine achievement, relate to Emerson’s own broader philosophical commitments? Does this portrait reveal something distinctive about Emerson’s own intellectual temperament beyond simple biographical analysis of Montaigne himself?
• Does treating historical greatness as democratically accessible, present in smaller measure within every reader, adequately account for the genuine rarity of the achievements Emerson describes, or does this framing risk understating how exceptional figures like Shakespeare or Napoleon actually were relative to ordinary human capacity?
• What does the book’s overall structure, moving from Plato’s philosophical unification through increasingly complicated and finally openly criticized figures, suggest about Emerson’s own implicit ranking of these different forms of human achievement, and does this progression reveal a coherent underlying hierarchy of values?