Introduction: the new history of Emerson's politics and his philosophy of self-reliance / Alan M. Levine and Daniel S. Malachuk -- Pt. 1. Classics on Emerson's politics -- Emerson: the all and the one / Wilson Carey McWilliams -- Emerson and the inhibitions of democracy / Judith N. Shklar -- Self-reliance, politics, and society / George Kateb -- Aversive thinking: Emersonian representations in Heidegger and Nietzsche / Stanley Cavell -- Part 2. Emerson's self-reliance properly understood -- Self-reliance and complicity: Emerson's ethics of citizenship / Jack Turner -- The limits of self-reliance: Emerson, slavery, and abolition / James H. Read -- Emerson, self-reliance, and the politics of democracy / Len Gougeon -- Part III. The stubborn reality of Emerson's transcendentalism -- Skeptical triangle? a comparison of the political thought of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Montaigne / Alan M. Levine -- Emerson's politics, retranscendentalized / Daniel S. Malachuk -- Emerson's transcendental gaze and the "disagreeable particulars" of slavery: vision and the costs of idealism / Shannon L. Mariotti -- Part IV. Emerson and liberal democracy -- Property in being: liberalism and the language of ownership in Emerson's writing / Neal Dolan -- Standing for others: reform and representation in Emerson's political thought / Jason Frank -- Emerson's democratic platonism in representative men / G. Borden Flanagan.