1. What is Transcendentalism?

2. Transcendentalism A movement in the 19th century
Flourished in New England (Boston, Concord)
Influenced American culture and literature.

3. Beliefs
Every individual can reach ultimate truths through spiritual intuition, which transcends reason and sensory experience.
To discover truth, one must transcend or see beyond the physical world and seek out the ideal world.
Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality.

4. Main Ideas
1. Belief that God is present in every aspect of nature. This includes the human being.
2. Everyone is capable of apprehending God through the use of intuition.
3. All of nature is symbolic of the spirit.
free thought, confidence, Importance of nature, self-reliance, non-conformity

5. Important figures:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

6. “Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.
--Emerson, "Nature"

7. Transcendentalism Club
Members headed the movement
Members originated “The Dial”
This was the first independent and original journal published in the country

8. Connections “Going Green”
Emerson and Thoreau were concerned with how industrialization would effect nature and society.