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Video- “What is American Transcendentalism?” 

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Video- “What is American Transcendentalism?” 

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Transcendentalism had an effect on American literature, they believed that every person's goal should be liberation from the confines of “understanding” and the cultivation of “reasoning” and portrayed their beliefs in many pieces

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Background/Experience: He was a Unitarian minister throughout his youth, but he left the church in 1832 to devote himself to writing and teaching transcendentialism. He could also be described as a committed nationalist… passionate about American cultural independence.

Role in Movement: He was the leader and most eloquent voice.  His lectures drew huge crowds. His conversations drew intellectuals to his home to speak with him. He produced a significant body of poetry, but was most known for his essays and lectures. He wanted people to believe that people could find their own creativity.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau both created many pieces of well known literature in the form of essays, books, lectures, and poems

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Background/Experience: He moved out to the woods to live alone for 2 years. He lived as simple as a life as he could, hoping to find the essential facts of life and to learn what life has to offer. He wanted to avoid the modern world around him.

Role in Movement: He went even further in repudiating the repressive forces of society. He wanted people to realize that they did not need to conform to society’s expectations, and that they could instead listen to their instincts.

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Example of a Transcendentalist Act: Thoreau briefly went to jail rather than agreeing to pay a poll tax, he refused to give financial support to a government that permitted the existence of slavery

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Literature to note: “Nature” (1836) - Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841) - Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837) - Emerson, Walden (1854) - Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849) - Thoreau

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The transcendentalists were able to push other americans into fighting for what they believed in and for “liberation from the confines of ‘understanding’ and the cultivation of ‘reasoning’”

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Transcendentalists are considered to be forerunners in upheavals that were about to break out across the country

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They inspired many other Americans to fight for their liberation from the confines of understanding, in other words to stand up for what they believe is unjust or needs to change

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Transcendentalism had its origin in Unitarianism, but eventually split and embraced more of a spiritual experience.
Borrowed ideas from German Philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, and Schelling as well as English writers Coleridge and Carlyle.
Stated that the Theory of the Individual rested on a distinction between reason and understanding.
They had their own definitions of reason and understanding though:

Reason- the individual's innate capacity to grasp beauty and truth through giving full expression to the instincts and emotions

Understanding- the use of intellect in the narrow, artificial ways imposed by society

The movement embraced ideas of idealism.
Emerson contributed many ideas to the movement:

The search for self-reliance was really a search for communion with the natural world and God

Thoreau also contributed:

To work for self-realization, individuals must resist pressures to conform and respond to their own instincts

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To liberate individuals from the confines of “understanding” and to deepen reason.
Individuals should attempt to rise above the limits of intellect and allow emotions to clean an “original relation to the Universe.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson spread the word about the movement to help it achieve its goals by publishing poetry, essays, “Nature” being one of his best known, and lecturing, as he did with“The American Scholar,” about the subject of Transcendentalism.

Henry David Thoreau wrote a book, Walden, to help himself with self-realization and also to inform others