American Transcendentalism

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American Transcendentalism

• Radical Romantics

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Roots of Transcendentalism

• Romanticism
• New attitude toward nature, humanity and society
  that emphasizes individualism and freedom.
• A celebration of individualism
• A reverence for nature
• The rebel (individual vs. society)
• A concern with the impact of new technology
• A fascination with death and the supernatural
• An impulse toward reform

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Transcendentalism

• A literary movement, associated with Ralph Waldo
  Emerson, says the existence of an ideal spiritual
  reality that transcends the scientific is
  knowable through intuition.

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Inspirations

• Kant? Mysticism the belief in realities or
  truths beyond the present reach of reason.
• direct communication or spiritual intuition of
  divine truth A transcendental union of soul or
  mind with the divine reality or divinity
• Reaction to Locke? Empiricism sense experience
  is the only source of knowledge.

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Catalysts

• Erosion of Puritanism
• Secularization--Science/Tech
• Industrialization
• European Influence
• Access to Spiritual Ideas

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Transcendentalism

• 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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Concepts of Transcendentalism

• Natural State of Man
• Divinity Within
• Oversoul
• Nature
• Intuition
• Individualism
• Carpe Diem
• Technology

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Transcendental Beliefs

• NATURAL STATE OF MAN--Moral
• Society pollutes man.

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Transcendental Beliefs

• The Divine Intellectpart of God in each man
  intuition innate understanding of what is right
  and good direct line of communication between
  God and man
• Divinity within Man

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Transcendental Beliefs
man universe nature

• OVERSOUL
• man, universe, and nature are intertwined
• Universal soul that permeates all beingsthe
  force
• I become a transparent eye-ball I am nothing I
  see all the currents of the Universal Being
  circulate through me I am part or particle of
  God.- Nature

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Transcendental Beliefs

• INTUITION over Reason
• Individual Intuition highest form of knowledge
  the creative insight and interpretation of one's
  own inner voices

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Platos World of Forms

• Natural world is symbolic of the spiritual world

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Transcendental Beliefs

• Reverence of NATURE
• Nature is inherently goodsymbolic
• The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature
  face to face wethrough their eyes. Why should
  we not also enjoy an original relation to the
  universe?- Emerson

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Transcendental Beliefs

• INDIVIDUALISM
• True to own inner perception or intuition
• Divinity of each individual, but this divinity
  could be discovered only if the person had the
  independence of mind to do so
• Self-Reliance
• Nonconformity

If I know it is truth, then it is truth.
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Transcendental Beliefs

• Carpe Diem
• Death
• Transcend

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Criticism of Technology

• Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which
  distract our attention from serious things. They
  are but improved means to an unimproved endWe
  are in great haste to construct a magnetic
  telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and
  Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
  communicate. (19)Thoreau

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Transcendentalism

• Basic belief By meditating, by communing with
  nature through art, man transcends his senses and
  finds beauty, goodness, and truth

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References

• http//www.jesuitcp.org/facultypages/rmcghee/Ameri
  can20Literature/Transcendentalism/Transcendentali
  sm20notes.htm
• http//www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/4i
  ntro.html
• http//www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/ideas/
  introduction.html