To find in this extraordinary book, Representative Men, an Emerson expounding the primacy of personality and heroic genius in six major figures of Western European civilization - Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Goethe - seems nothing short of anomalous.

Was Emerson reconsidering his own philosophical premises? Or is there a hidden agenda in this study that reflects on European phenomena and values? As the notion of the "representative" is becoming increasingly central to our national cultural debate, it seems of utmost importance to reexamine Emerson's meditations and seek in them a challenge to philosophy.