The Best Books on American Philosophy | Five Books Expert Recommendations by John Kaag

...there is another aspect to Emerson, even in the First Series, that balances out this individualism. I think that's what's really interesting in the First Series and in Emerson's essays generally.

We have 'Self-Reliance,' but then we have a sister essay in the same series called 'Compensation' which looks nothing like 'Self-Reliance.' Similarly, in the Second Series, you have two sister essays that reflect the same issue of power and fate. The difficulty and the challenge of reading Emerson is to read these diametrically opposed positions together or side-by-side and see them as creating a productive tension. 'Compensation' says that your freedom is always limited by your history. Freedom is always limited by the genealogy that you find yourself in. This too, I think, would resonate with Nietzsche. But, more specifically, Emerson says that we always operate within a wider cosmic, social and political give-and-take. There is no action without an equal and opposite reaction. And that reaction is just as real and just as connected to us as the action itself. For example, you can think about 'Self-Reliance' as this promethean call to activity, whereas 'Compensation' is this sense that we must hold back, or rather that we must hold things in reserve, or that our actions are always set within a wider context or network of relations. So, I think these two essays, with this push towards freedom and the pull towards togetherness that you see in 'Self-Reliance' and 'Compensation,' are interesting poles that create the tension that drives American Transcendentalism but also American Pragmatism...

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/american-philosophy-john-kaag/