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Explore the philosophical movement of American Transcendentalism, founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and its beliefs in the innate goodness of humanity, the unity of God, nature, and humanity, and the importance of intuition and non-conformity.
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American Transcendentalism “ It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, always do what you are afraid to do.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
TranscendentalismLatin: across, over, beyond • The movement spanned the years of 1833-1843. • The Transcendental movement was based in Concord, Massachusetts. • Ralph Waldo Emerson founded the Transcendental movement following the death of his wife.
Transcendentalism • This movement 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.
Three Major Tenets (Beliefs) • Human senses are limited; they convey knowledge of the physical world, but deeper truths can be grasped only through intuition. • The observation of nature illuminates the nature of human beings. • God, nature, and humanity are united in a shared universal soul, or Over-Soul.
Unlike Puritans, they saw humans and nature as possessing an innate goodness. “In the faces of men and women, I see God” -Walt Whitman Opposed strict ritualism and dogma of established religion.
Could you be a Transcendentalist? • Believed in living close to nature/importance of nature. Nature is the source of truth and inspiration. • Taught the dignity of manual labor • Advocated self-trust/ confidence • Valued individuality/non-conformity/free thought • Advocated self-reliance/ simplicity
The first transcendentalists • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Margaret Fuller • Henry David Thoreau
“Self-Reliance” -Emerson “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”
Henry David Thoreau • Was the most famous student of Emerson • Built a cabin on land owned by Emerson in Concord, near Walden Pond • Lived alone there for two years studying nature and seeking truth within himself • Wrote Walden
“I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately,to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it has to teach,and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
“Still we live meanly like ants.”“Our life is frittered away by detail.”“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?”“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I say, let your affairs be as two or three and not a hundred or a thousand.”
Individuality “How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”
“Civil Disobedience” • Thoreau’s essay urging passive, non-violent resistance to governmental policies to which an individual is morally opposed. • Influenced individuals such a Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez
“[If injustice] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be the friction to stop the machine.”
