This article aims to rewrite Emerson’s moral perfectionism – his anti-foundationalist pursuit of an always more perfect state of self and society – onto his moral and intellectual participation in the abolitionist movement. I argue that Cavell artificially separated Emerson’s moral perfectionism from his extensive, decades-long abolitionism. The source of Cavell’s oversight is his participation in the long-standing norm of dichotomizing Emerson’s work into the theoretical ‘essays’ and the ‘anti-slavery writings’ or the philosophical and the polemical. Recent scholars of Emerson have questioned and even dismissed this dichotomy, however, while recentring Emerson’s politics in his oeuvre as a whole. They find much to praise, and also plenty to criticize, in Emerson’s abolitionist writings. I follow and extend that scholarly trend here and introduce what I call Emerson’s abolitionist perfectionism as an expansion of Cavell’s influential work on moral perfectionism.

本文旨在将爱默生的道德完美主义——他对自我和社会始终更完美状态的反基础主义追求——改写为他对废奴运动的道德和智力参与。我认为卡维尔人为地将爱默生的道德完美主义与他广泛的、长达数十年的废奴主义分开了。卡维尔疏忽的根源在于他参与了将爱默生的作品分为理论“散文”和“反奴隶制著作”或哲学和论战的长期规范。然而，最近的爱默生学者质疑甚至驳回了这种二分法，同时重新审视了爱默生整个作品中的政治。在爱默生的废奴主义著作中，他们有很多值得赞扬的地方，也有很多地方值得批评。废奴主义完美主义是卡维尔关于道德完美主义的有影响力著作的扩展。