Notes on Margaret Fuller

In reading a review on the New York review of books of two biographies of Fuller, the reviewer discusses Fuller's view of self-culture, stating "for Fuller the self in self culture was at once individual and collective, spiritual and social, historical and transcendental".  Self culture for Fuller was not just working on self perfection, growth and development but on all humanity. We live in the "defective world of empirical reality" but we strive for the metaphysical essence. In a person subjugating another person they obstruct their own personal aspiration. In this sense, our disrespect of another person is ultimately our disrespect of our self. And yet, such disrespect prevails and seems to be more the norm than the exception. We live too much in our empirical world and not enough in our aspirational, or perhaps too much in a world of fear (fear of what? Death? Our own infallibility which would mean what?). Our focus is not on self growth in the finest sense of the word "self", but on self deception or self aggrandizement at the expense of growth. And often, instead of growth we stagnate at best and go backwards at our worst, defending our fragile self with a mixture of anger, disrespect, judgment and ridicule.



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