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This thesis reflects an examination of parallels between Ralph Waldo Emerson’s evolution in thinking about humanity’s moral sense and the shift from rationalist to intuitionist models in twenty-first century moral psychology. An examination of Emerson’s journals reveals that although he apparently began with a belief that human moral judgments follow reason, he eventually came to believe that moral judgments come from an intuitive moral sense. Nearly two hundred years later, the science of moral psychology made a similar shift as a result of facts that cast doubt on the predominant rationalist models and experimental evidence in behavioral studies and imaging studies of neural activity related to formations of moral judgments. This thesis explores and illustrates the phenomenon of moral intuition described in the new social intuitionist model of moral psychology as it appears in Emerson’s journals, addresses, and writings around 1840. Parallels between Emerson’s beliefs and current moral psychology are described.
