American Transcendentalism

1
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

2
Transcendentalism

• A literary movement in the 1830s 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.

3
(No Transcript)
4

• 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.

5
(No Transcript)
6
Transcendentalism The tenets

• 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

7
(No Transcript)
8
The first transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Margaret Fuller
• Henry David Thoreau
• Bronson Alcott

9
Self-reliance -Emerson

• There is a time in every mans 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

10
(No Transcript)
11
Nature

• Thoreau began essential living
• 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

12
(No Transcript)
13

• 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.

14
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our
heads.
15
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.
16
(No Transcript)
17
Individuality

• How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.

18
(No Transcript)
19

• 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.

20
Civil Disobedience

• Thoreaus 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

21
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.
22
(No Transcript)
23
(No Transcript)
24
Answer the following in your journals

• How are you affected by nature? Do you find
  comfort in it? Do you reflect the moods of
  nature?
• What is the role of nature in your life?
• What is meant by an individuals spiritual side?
  How do you define it?
• Is there a connection between the individuals
  spirit and nature? If so, what is that
  connection?
• What does it mean to know something intuitively?
  For example, has a parent or a sibling ever known
  something was wrong with you without having
  talked with or seen you? What do we mean when we
  say I just know it?
• How do you demonstrate that you are an
  individual? Do you think independently of others
  or do you follow the crowd?