Ben Franklin is an obvious historical and famous person during the rationalism period. He invented certain things such as the lightning rod and a certain type of stove. He was a famous writer, writing works including almanacs, books, newspapers, journals, and even his own autobiography. Ralph Emerson, who has the middle name of Waldo, (What a cool middle name!), is probably not as well known as Ben Franklin, but he is still a known figure. He was a Romanticism writer. Well, actually, he was more of a transcendentalist writer during the Romanticism Period as he later gave up Romanticism writing. Anyway, he wrote many essays and prose poems, including Self-Reliance, Heroism, and Nature, the essay I will be discussing a little bit in this blog. There is a little tad bit of their literary history, and now for the real question. How are those two different men similar in their beliefs?
So, how are they? One was from the Rationalism Period, and the other one was from the Romanticism Period. In case you are not quite sure what these two literary periods were about, these periods were pretty much opposites. Rationalism, which came first, was about the scientific facts. It included logic, reason, knowledge, proof, science, and the longing of all these things. Romanticism, which came next as a reaction to Rationalism, was about intuition, religion, nature in its beauty, feelings, patriotism, human nature, and a person's soul. They are two different things, but the people of these period do have one major thing in common. This is the view of creation, including God and nature.
Ben Franklin believed that God created the world and nature, and that this was apparent, but that that was it. God was not considered a reigning figure in each person. God was associated with creation and nature but not with a personal relationship or association with a person's soul. Emerson had pretty much the same view as Franklin. Emerson believed that anywhere one looked in nature, God's influence could be seen. In other words, it was also apparent that God created nature and the world.
This idea is the main similarity between these two different men, Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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