American TranscendentalismAmerican TranscendentalismApproximately 1830 to 1860

Definition• TRANSCEND:

– to go beyond a limit or range, for example, of thought or belief

• TRANSCENDENTALISM, at its core is about “moving beyond” common experience and understanding.

Transcendentalism • A literary movement in the 1830’s

that established a clear “American voice”.

• Emerson first expressed his philosophy in his essay “Nature.”

• A belief in a higher reality than that achieved by human reasoning.

• Suggests that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth through intuition.

Influences• Reaction against New

England Puritanism• Reaction against the

Enlightenment (using rational thought to solve problems [the Age of Reason])

• Romanticism• German philosophy• Eastern philosophy

(Hinduism)

Popularity• As with Romanticism,

Americans felt that there must be more to life than logical, rational experience.

• The Transcendentalists sought to regain a spirituality that they thought was missing from current thought and philosophy.

View of Man

Each man must have

self-reliance.

Major Premises• 1. The structure of the

universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self - all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge. This is similar to Aristotle's dictum "know thyself."

• TO KNOW THE UNIVERSE, YOU CAN LOOK AT YOURSELF.

Major Premises• 2. The belief that individual virtue

and happiness depend upon self-realization - this depends upon the reconciliation of two universal psychological tendencies: – a. the expansive or self-

transcending tendency - a desire to embrace the whole world - to know and become one with the world.

– b. the contracting or self-asserting tendency - the desire to withdraw, remain unique and separate - an egotistical existence.

THESE TWO IDEAS HAVE TO EXIST TOGETHER;

TRANSCENDENTALISTS SOUGHT TO

UNDERSTAND AND JOIN IN WITH THE WHOLE

WORLD, BUT THEY ALSO STROVE TO REMAIN

INDIVIDUALISTS AT ALL TIMES.

View of Nature

Man and nature are connected.

Major Premises• 3. Transcendentalists accepted

the neo-Platonic conception of nature as a living mystery, full of signs - nature is symbolic.

• JUST LIKE IN ROMANTICISM, NATURE HOLDS THE KEY TO DEEPER UNDERSTANDING.

Guide to Truth

Intuition is the surest guide to truth.

Major Premises• 4. An individual is the spiritual

center of the universe - and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself. It is not a rejection of the existence of God, but a preference to explain an individual and the world in terms of an individual.

• EACH PERSON HAS ALL OF THE DIVINE ASPECTS OF GOD WITHIN THEMSELVES.

Transcendental Authors• Ralph Waldo Emerson -

former Unitarian minister from Massachusetts who became the most well known Transcendentalist

• Henry David Thoreau – Emerson’s pupil, the son of pencil maker who dropped out of society to live a solitary and transcendent life

• Margaret Fuller - teacher and renowned literary critic who wrote on women’s issues, Indians, and a wealth of other subjects

Transcendental Authors

Transcendental Authors• Ralph Waldo Emerson

– Lived 1803-1882– Unitarian Minister

(7th generation)– Death of his first wife from

tuberculosis caused him to question traditional Christianity

– Focused on personal experience rather than historical Christianity

Emersonian Philosophy “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation in suicide…” “Trust thyself…” “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think…” “…to be great is to be misunderstood”

Emersonian PhilosophyBrahma If the red slayer think he slays,   Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways   I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near,    Shadow and sunlight are the same, The vanished gods to me appear,   And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;   When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt,   And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode,   And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good!   Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…”

–from “Self Reliance”

America needs an original, uniquely

American philosophy

Emersonian Philosophy

Emersonian Philosophy

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds… Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.”

-from “Self-Reliance”

Emersonian Philosophy

“Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed in the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball: I am nothing: I see all: the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God”

-from “Nature”

Emersonian Philosophy

“An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man”

–”Self-Reliance”Every man must discover the truth for himself. Simply parroting the wisdom of the past shows no real wisdom. Only the individual search, discovery and expression of truth matters.

Trust thyself:

every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Hi, I’m Emerson,

and I think…

He’d have bigger

muscles if not for society…

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one

of its members.

The virtue that most request is

conformity.

I could use a

snack!

Whoso would be a man must be a

non-conformist.

Don’t go too

far!

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your

own mind.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my

nature.

Do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations.

My life is for itself, and not

for a spectacle

.

It is easy in the world to live after the

world’s opinion…it is easy in solitude to

live after our own…but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps

with perfect sweetness the

independence of solitude.

With consistency, a great soul has simply

nothing to do.

Let a man then know his worth

and keep things under

his feet.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise.

Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at

home.

Insist on yourself…

never imitate.

Society never

advances.

The civilized man has built a

coach, but has lost the use of his

feet.

They measure

their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each

is.

Transcendental Authors

•Henry David Thoreau–Lived 1817-1862–Thoreau is best known for experimenting in self reliance by living at Walden Pond

Thoreau and Emerson

• Thoreau was Emerson’s protégé–Friendship developed after Thoreau graduated from Harvard

–1850s…Thoreau eventually resented Emerson’s patronage, and Emerson viewed Thoreau lacking ambition

Thoreau’s Endeavors• Thoreau’s essay (“Civil

Disobedience”) urging passive, non-violent resistance to governmental policies to which an individual is morally opposed.

• Influenced:

Thoreau’s Endeavors• Thoreau began “essential”

living (“Nature”)

• Built a cabin on land owned to Emerson in Concord, Mass. near Walden Pond

• Lived alone there for two years studying nature and seeking truth within himself

Walden Pond

Walden Pond