Title: American Transcendentalism
1American 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
2Transcendentalism
- A literary movement in the 1830s that
established a clear American voice. - Ralph Waldo 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.
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4Transcendentalists
- Unlike Dark Romantics, 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.
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6Transcendentalism 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
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8The first transcendentalists
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Margaret Fuller
- Henry David Thoreau
- Bronson Alcott
9Self-reliance - essay by Ralph Waldo 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
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11Nature by Henry David Thoreau
- 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
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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. -Thoreau
14Heaven is under our feet as well as over our
heads.
15Still 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.
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17Individuality
- How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.
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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.
20Civil Disobedience
- Thoreaus essay urging passive, non-violent
resistance to governmental policies to which an
individual is morally opposed. - Influenced individuals such as Ghandi, Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez
21If 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.
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23Do Not confuse with Uncivil DisobedienceCedarfe
st 2008
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25Transcendentalism in your Community