Representative Men

First delivered as lectures in 1845-46 and published in 1850, Representative Men is Emerson's answer to Carlyle's On Heroes — not great men as demigods, but as lenses through which universal truths become visible. The essay on Plato alone ('Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato') is one of the finest short treatments of Greek thought ever written. Each portrait captures not just a life but an archetype of human possibility.