ny other person set for him or her the limits of his or her thoughts is an individual who has allowed himself or herself to be enslaved, a person who is reliant not on his or her own reason but on the whims of strangers:
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world (Emerson, 1987, 58).
However, this position is not the existentialist or anarchic manifesto it might first appear. Emerson is not saying that every individual can or should do whatever he wishes without regard for morality, spirituality or other members of society. Emerson is not defining self-reliance as not caring what effect one's actions have on other people, but rather that one should not care what others think about one's actions. He also does not suggest that the self-reliant person should do whatever he wants to do, but rather that he should gauge his actions according to their goodness.
With this stand in mind, it is clear that Emerson, whatever he might think of the moral worth or goodness of pornography, would nevertheless argue along with this writer that it is up to the individual and not the community to decide that worth or lack thereof.
At the same time, it would be difficult to imagine Emerson arguing that it is the right of the individual to get drunk and drive on public roads, endangering the lives of others. He would likely agree that random stops to test for drunk drivers are acceptable. Even if drunk driving did not endanger the lives of others, Emerson would likely argue for random stops because the drunk driver, according to Emerson's standards, could not claim to be merely an individual exercising his or her right to think for himself or herself. The drunk driver, after all, can hardly be s...