Transcendentalism
Where did it come from?
• Ralph Waldo Emerson gave German philosopher
Immanuel Kant credit for popularizing the term
“transcendentalism.”
• It began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church,
seeking a more emotionally fulfilling relationship with the
Divine, rather than a well-reasoned one.
• It is not a religion—more accurately, it is a philosophy or
form of spirituality that seeks to give people a way to see
the divinity (or blessings) inherent in the everyday world
around them.
• It centered around Boston and Concord, MA. in the mid1800’s where it emerged at Harvard College as a
reaction against the rationality of the Unitarians.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson gave German philosopher
Immanuel Kant credit for popularizing the term
“transcendentalism.”
Human beings can instinctively
know the truth of something…
• Kant (was expanding the ideas of the French philosopher Jean
Jacques Rousseau) believed that the human mind was more
than simply the sum of worldly experiences; rather, the mind
contains innate structures or “categories” that enable it to
actively organize the outside world in a comprehensible way.
• We know these categories by the human faculty called
intuition.
• Kant suggested that human beings could instinctively know
the truth of something without conscious reasoning or rational
thought.
• This idea went directly against the prevailing Rationalist
philosophy of the Unitarian Church, which then held sway at
Harvard. Unitarianism itself was a rejection of both the
Puritanical roots of American Protestantism and the
Evangelical revival of the period.
• The Transcendentalists were seen as radicals by the wellheeled, Establishment Unitarians.
• Kant called his philosophy
“Transcendental philosophy,” because one
“transcends,” or goes beyond, rationality
or sense perception.
• Using intuition, one can see beyond
physical Nature and into what he saw as a
higher truth—the spiritual world.
• The individualistic nature of this view of
reality undercut the authority of organized
religion.
What are the main ideas?
• True reality involves ideas rather than just
the world perceived by the senses. They
wanted to look past physical appearances
to see permanent reality and truth.
• Transcendentalists were Idealists in a
broader, more practical sense. They
believed in human perfectibility as an
achievable goal and worked to achieve it.
• Emerson first expressed his philosophy of
transcendentalism in his essay Nature.
The Transcendentalists told everyone…
Believe in yourself…the voice inside your
head is really the voice of God speaking
intuitively inside you.
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that
iron string.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What did Transcendentalists believe?
For the first time, the Vedas were available in English.
These sacred texts from India, written in the Sanskrit
language are as much philosophical as religious. Emerson
and Thoreau read this material and it influenced their ideas
about the nature and goals of life itself.
The Vedas confirmed that the intuitive faculty, instead of
rational or sensical ones, became the means for a
conscious union of the individual psyche (known in
Sanskrit as Atman) with the world psyche also known as
the Oversoul, life-force, prime mover and God (known in
Sanskrit as Brahman).
Spiritual living is established by the individual
• A person’s relationship to God was very
important,
– BUT it was established by the person
himself/herself and NOT by following the
dictates of any church.
– There was also a strong belief in brotherhood
and equality.
– This helped fuel a sense of common cause
among different groups and social classes
which led to the progressive movements
against slavery and in favor of women’s rights
and the protection of the environment.
Basic Premise #1
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.
Basic Premise #2
The structure of the
universe literally
duplicates the structure
of the individual self—all
knowledge, therefore,
begins with selfknowledge. This is
similar to Aristotle's
dictum "know thyself.“
The inner cosmos
reflects the outer
cosmos.
Basic Premise #3
Transcendentalists
accepted the concept
of nature as a living
mystery, full of signs.
Nature is symbolic
and reveals its
mysteries to those
who take the time to
be still and to see, feel
and hear that reality.
Basic Premise #4
The belief that individual virtue and
happiness depend upon selfrealization—this depends upon the
reconciliation of two universal
psychological tendencies:
1. The desire to embrace the whole world—
to know and become one with the world.
2. The desire to withdraw, remain unique
and separate—an individualistic
existence.
Who were the Transcendentalists?
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•
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•
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Amos Bronson Alcott
Margaret Fuller
Ellery Channing
Ralph Waldo Emerson
•
•
•
•
1803-1882
Unitarian minister
Poet and essayist
Founded the
Transcendental Club
• Popular lecturer
• Banned from Harvard for
40 years following his
Divinity School address
• Supporter of abolitionism
Henry David Thoreau
• 1817-1862
• Schoolteacher, essayist,
poet
• Most famous for Walden
and Civil Disobedience
• Influenced environmental
movement
• Supporter of abolitionism
Amos Bronson Alcott
• 1799-1888
• Teacher and writer
• Founder of Temple
School and Fruitlands
• Introduced art, music,
P.E., nature study, and
field trips; banished
corporal punishment
• Father of novelist Louisa
May Alcott
Margaret Fuller
• 1810-1850
• Journalist, critic, women’s
rights activist
• First editor of The Dial, a
transcendental journal
• First female journalist to
work on a major
newspaper—The New
York Tribune
• Taught at Alcott’s Temple
School
Ellery Channing
• 1818-1901
• Poet and especially
close friend of
Thoreau
• Published the first
biography of Thoreau
in 1873—Thoreau,
The Poet-Naturalist
Resources
• American Transcendental Web:
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/index.html
• American Transcendentalism:
http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/amtrans.htm
• PAL: Chapter Four
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/4intro.html