Reza Hosseini, a senior lecturer in Philosophy at IIE MSA, the author of Wittenstein and Meaning in Life (2015) and Emerson’s Literary Philosophy (2021), was invited to an online Symposium on his work. He was invited by the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in October on his ‘Emerson’s Literary Philosophy’ book where he was given an opportunity to respond to critics on the panel of guests.

This book situates Ralph Waldo Emerson in the tradition of philosophy as “spiritual exercise”, arguing that the defining feature of his literary philosophy is the conviction that there is an inherent link between moral persuasion and literary excellence. Hosseini persuasively argues that the Emersonian project can be viewed as an extension of Socrates’ call for a return to the beginning of philosophy, to search for a way of revolutionizing our ways of seeing from within. Examining Emerson’s provocative style of writing, Hosseini contends that his prose is shaped by a desire to bring about psychagogia or influencing the soul through the power of words.

For more information about the book, please see the publisher’s webpage:  https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030549787