Eng 11 Agenda 1/21/15 OR 1/22/15 Objective: Students will take notes on transcendentalism and Emerson. Students will also read and annotate “Self Reliance” Silent Reading (Library Book) Notes on Transcendentalism and Emerson Read and Annotate “Self Reliance” Homework: None

What Was Transcendentalism? Transcendentalism was a nineteenth-century philosophical movement. Transcendentalists believed that true reality transcends, or exists beyond, the physical world. Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world. —Ralph Waldo Emerson *

Transcendentalism Transcend: [verb] to go beyond the limits of; exceed; be above and independent of the physical universe.

Transcendentalism “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

Transcendentalism flourished in the US in the decades before the Civil War: the antebellum period.

Basic Beliefs of Transcendentalism Everything in the world, including people, is a reflection of God, or the Divine Soul. The physical world is a doorway to the spiritual world. People can use intuition to see God in nature and in their own souls. A person—not society, the church, or government—is his or her own best authority. Feeling and intuition are superior to reason and intellect. *

Deism Transcendentalism also involved a rejection of some strict Puritan religious attitudes Unlike the Puritans, the Transcendentalists saw humans and nature as possessing an innate goodness.

Born Bad or Good? Enlightenment Sinful Blank Slate Good Puritans Transcendentalists Good

Transcendentalists believed there was an inherent connection between all living elements and human beings. They believed that through the attainment of knowledge, human beings could transcend the limitations of the physical senses and attain spiritual awareness and enlightenment.

They believed that this knowledge resided within an individual and could be accessed through meditation, self aware ness and communing with nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson was the best-known Transcendentalist. He… was a highly influential writer, lecturer, and social reformer lectured and wrote extensively on Transcendental ideas was admired by and influenced other writers and artists, including Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman © 2003-2004 clipart.com *

Emerson’s Optimism Optimism (positive thinking) was an important part of Emerson’s transcendentalist view. He believed that… because God is good, all natural events and experiences, even death and disaster, can be explained on a spiritual level we can know God directly through the power of our intuition by trusting our own power to know God directly, we will see that we, too, are a part of the Divine Soul *

What Have You Learned? 1. The transcendentalists believed that reality existed more in ideas than in physical things. a. true b. false 2. Emerson was a critic of transcendentalism. a. true b. false 3. Transcendentalists believed people were born sinners. *