I mentioned Fuller the week before last, even posting a portrait of her above a list of key philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Let us say a bit more.... She did not have a long life (1810 - 1850), dying in a shipwreck on a sandbar near Fire Island, attempting to return to the US after a trip to Italy. Fuller was associated with the Transcendentalist movement of the day, and with its organ The Dial, which she edited 1840 - 44. She brought a distinctive tone to that periodical, described sometimes as "noisy, histrionic and sincere," in contrast to the more cerebral and somewhat ironic distanced tone one finds in Emerson's essays. Philosophically, she was an unabashed Platonist. This meant that there was a Reason that surpassed understanding -- understanding is something we can get WITHIN the cave, “Reason” is the faculty through which a wise person conducts the Platonic Quest to go beyond the material in search of the ideal. Emerson, to continue th...