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. What does “transcendentalism” mean? There is an ideal spiritual state which “transcends” the physical and empirical. A loose collection of eclectic ideas about literature, philosophy, religion, social reform, and the general state of American culture. Transcendentalism had different meanings for each person involved in the movement.

3. Where did it come from? Ralph Waldo Emerson gave German philosopher Immanuel Kant credit for popularizing the term “transcendentalism.” It began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church. It is not a religion—more accurately, it is a philosophy or form of spirituality. It centered around Boston and Concord, MA. in the mid-1800’s. Emerson first expressed his philosophy of transcendentalism in his essay Nature.

4. What did Transcendentalists believe? The intuitive faculty, instead of the rational or sensical, became the means for a conscious union of the individual psyche (known in Sanskrit as Atman) with the world psyche also known as the Oversoul, life-force, prime mover and G-d (known in Sanskrit as Brahma).

5. Basic Premise #1 An individual is the spiritual center of the universe, and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself. It is not a rejection of the existence of G-d, but a preference to explain an individual and the world in terms of an individual.

6. Basic Premise #2 The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self— all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge. This is similar to Aristotle's dictum "know thyself."

7. Basic Premise #3 Transcendentalists accepted the concept of nature as a living mystery, full of signs; nature is symbolic.

8. Basic Premise #4 The belief that individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization— this depends upon the reconciliation of two universal psychological tendencies: 1.The desire to embrace the whole world—to know and become one with the world. 2.The desire to withdraw, remain unique and separate—an egotistical existence.

9. Transcendentalism A literary movement in the 1830’s 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.

11. 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.

12. Emotion Supernatural Atmosphere Nature Individual Subjectivity Transcendentalism Gothic Romanticism

14. 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

16. The first transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson Margaret Fuller Henry David Thoreau Bronson Alcott

17. “Self-reliance” -Emerson “There is a time in every man’s 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”

19. “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

21. “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.”

22. “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

23. “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.”

25. Individuality “How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.”

27. “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.”

28. “Civil Disobedience” Thoreau’s 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

29. “[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.”

31. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of the race should find them..”