Transcendentalism

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Transcendentalism
1830-1860
The view that the basic truths of the universe
lie beyond the knowledge we obtain from our
senses, reason, logic, or laws of science. We
learn these truths through our intuition, our
Divine Intellect.
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Transcendentalism IS

• Included in the Romantic Era of American writing
• A rebirth or Renaissance of intellectual and
  artistic achievements
• A movement that occurred from 1830-1860 (Civil
  War) that made a cultural imprint with American
  idealism and ethical issues
• Where people looked to the literary man for
  guidance

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Transcendentalism began as a reaction to

• economic prosperity, whereby cities and
  governments had been established.
• Social problems that needed to be analyzed
  following that growth slavery
• Child labor, materialism, political corruption,
  American expansionism

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Transcendentalist Beliefs

• The spiritual unity of all forms of being with
  God, Humanity, and Nature all sharing a universal
  soul, the Oversoul
• The inherent goodness (divinity!) of Man and
  Nature
• The value of individualism
• The belief that the natural world is symbolic of
  the spirit world
• The Lemon Pie theory (to know the part is to
  know the whole)
• That Society is the source of corruptive,
  distracting materialism

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• That Man is naturally good, even divine, because
  of his Divine Intellect
• That Nature is inherently good because it is
  symbolic of the spirit (God)
• --That God, the Oversoul, is the universal soul
  that permeates all being (much like the Force)

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Transcendentalism View of the World

• Everything in the world, including human beings
  is a reflection of the divine soul
• The physical facts of the natural world are a
  doorway to the spiritual or ideal world.
• People can use their intuition to behold Gods
  spirit revealed in nature and in their own souls.
  
• Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh
  external authority and blind conformity
• Spontaneous feeling and intuition are superior to
  deliberate intellectualism and rationality.

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Examples
What does it mean to transcend?

• Transcend Go beyond
• Central Idea of Transcendentalism The way to
  truth or ultimate reality is not available to
  reason, logic, science, or the senses it is
  available only through intuition--what the
  Transcendentalists called the Divine Intellect.
• Example We can tell by using our reason, logic,
  science, and the senses, whether a person is dead
  or alive we CANNOT tell by using our reason,
  logic, science, or the senses, whether or not it
  is GOOD to be alive.
• Transcendentalism is an extreme form of
  Romanticism and shares its views of Man, Nature,
  God, and Society.

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What were their belief about God?

• God To the Transcendentalists, God is the
  Oversoul, the soul of the Universe. God is like
  the Force (in Star Wars) but without a Dark Side.
• Imagine a sea or ocean of benevolence that
  surrounds us. This sea has no surface and no
  bottom. We float in this sea like little bottles.
• This is the Transcendentalist idea of what the
  Oversoul is like.
• N.B. The Transcendentalists were not Christians.
  Their vision of God was Unitarian--not
  Trinitarian.

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View of Man?

• Man Go back to your image of the bottomless,
  surface-less sea. Man is a bottle floating in the
  sea. The bottle is filled with a drop of the same
  water in which he floats. There is a cork in the
  bottle.
• The drop of water is the Divine Intellect or
  Intuition--a piece of God which defines each
  individual person. Christians might refer to this
  part of Man as his conscience, or perhaps his
  soul.

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View of Nature?

• Nature To the Transcendentalists, Nature was a
  reflection of the Oversoul and the way to
  communicate with the Oversoul. Contemplation of
  Nature enables Man to pop his cork and become
  one with God.
• Nature is good, beautiful, and a reflection of,
  and conduit to, God.

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View of Society?

• Society
• Question What prevents the individual from
  following his Divine Intellect and doing what is
  good?
• Answer Society and its corrupting Materialism.
•  According to the Transcendentalists, Society is
  corruptive because under its influence and
  pressure to conform, Man is discouraged and
  distracted from listening to his Divine Intellect
  and doing what he knows in his heart to be good.

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Two Transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau

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Transcendentalists left these legacies

• They influenced Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther
  King, Jr. through the notion of Civil
  Disobedience.
• They influenced the beat generation of writers
  and artists during the 50s and the young
  radicals of the 60s and 70s, where anti-war,
  anti-government, and anti-materialism ideologies
  existed.
• Meditation and the New Age movement.
• Modern writers like Frost and Ginsberg.