Roots of Transcendentalism

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Roots of Transcendentalism

• Background for understanding Emerson, Thoreau,
  Whitman, Others

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A project for Early American Literature by

• Johnny Smirch

Connie Mack
Candy Lane
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Transcendentalist beliefs drawn from

• Neo-Platonism
• German Idealism
• Eastern Mysticism

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Neo-Platonism

• taken from the philosophy of Plato
• speaks of the essence of things
• the thing above the thing (metaphysical
  archetype)
• the essential world is the world of the ideal
• all physical reality has an ideal counterpart

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German Idealism

• translated by the English romantics Coleridge,
  Wordsworth, Carlyle
• German philosopher Immanuel Kant
• physical reality (the senses) and metaphysical
  reality (meta above, or beyond, or outside of)
  perceived not through human sensory experience
  but through intuition

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Eastern Mysticism

• Emerson was greatly influenced by Hindu scripture
• Bhagavadgita
• Brahman (World soul)
• Brahman-Atman ( a unit in the aggregate soul)

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