Before saying anything else, I want to make note of the logical fallacy of ad hominem, in which an attack is made against a person rather than against the position that they are representing. For example, if in the midst of an argument or a debate, Person A begins to call Person B ugly rather than actually addressing the issue at hand, they are falling to the logical fallacy of ad hominem.

I recently wrote a piece for Odyssey regarding Roland Barthes' Death of the Author and its applications to the writer J.K. Rowling. Employing the mindset of Death of the Author is a way of avoiding ad hominem, and I typically try to keep this mindset with my reading of any material.

I also recently made a post regarding the Transcendentalist Movement and how it was whitewashed and didn't give enough credit to the women who shaped the movement.

Bare with me; these are all related, I promise!

While reading some poems written by Jones Very, I found myself wondering how seriously I was supposed to be taking his writing, considering that the poems that I was reading were all written while Very was institutionalized in an insane asylum. The thought had barely crossed my mind before I realized I was falling prey to the very logical fallacy that I was so determined to avoid - ad hominem. As soon as I realized this, I also suddenly realized that I had been failing to read much of the literature assigned to me with an unbiased view, to the point that I was no longer really absorbing the writing.

My reasons for taking such a cynical view of the reading material was because I knew the lifestyles of many of the writers, and I believed that they had no real ability to deliver messages to their target audience. Something that I had noticed lately about many counterculture movements such as the Renaissance Period, the Transcendentalist Movement, and the Beats Generation was that the leaders and writers of such movements were often people who came from wealth and/ or power; they could afford to go against the grain of their cultures and fight it back and not worry about the consequences. But what about those not born into such privilege? What were their lives like, and what would have happened to them had they decided to join in the counterculture movement?

We must, of course, take everything with a grain of salt; Emerson had great ideas and helped define the American Scholar, but he did all of this from a very comfortable pile of money and a mansion. William S. Burroughs was one of the most prominent writers of the Beats Generation, and he had enough connections and monetary means to support a debilitating drug habit and bail him out of jail when he shot his wife in the head.

The privileged lives that these people led (and the ways they were able to take advantage of said privilege) can be seen echoed even in today's world, where celebrities are able to get away with a reprimand and a slap on the wrist for the same crimes that have landed middle and lower class citizens in jail for fifty plus years.

In my mind, I used these facts to challenge the validity of the statements, ideas, and influence of the people who lead such movements as the Renaissance Period, the Transcendentalist Movement, and the Beats Generation. What I failed to do was recognize that while we as critics and analysts must indeed question the material that we read, we must also allow ourselves to take a step back and not allow our opinions to be too heavily influenced by our opinions of where the work came from. The logical fallacy of ad hominem must not influence how we view the works. In order to fully appreciate the works and the people of the time period, I believe it is important to not only take into consideration who is introducing the idea, but also fully contemplate what is being said.

I failed to carry out my own ideas and beliefs, but I will strive to do better in my future readings.