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. Can you
pronounce it?
Can you spell it?
TRANSCENDENTALISM

3. Focus on Nature
Nonconformity
Free Thought
Basic truths of the universe lie beyond the knowledge we obtain from our senses, reason, logic, or laws of science. We learn these truths through our intuition, our “Divine Intellect.”
Self-Reliance
Confidence

4. A Transcendent God
Transcendent: Condition or state of being that is independent of physical existence.
As an attribute of God, transcendence means that God can be experienced as either remote from, or permeating
all aspects of reality
“In the faces of men and women, I see God”
-Walt Whitman

5. More on… A Transcendent God
In determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self and other important matters, one must transcend, or go beyond, everyday human experience in the physical world.

6. Regard for the INDIVIDUAL
Transcendentalism
Regard for the INDIVIDUAL

7. Regard for NATURE
symbolic of spirit
inherently good
Everyone has his own nature perceived through his personal intuition and his mystical awareness of the “Oversoul” (Emerson’s term for God, or the Universal Soul)

8. Regard for the ORDINARY and IMMEDIATE
Rejection of much in the past as interpreted by others
Not much interest in the future (causes a materialistic orientation- society distracts and corrupts us and causes this)

9. Regard for - THE Belief in the importance of SPONTANEITY
Go with your intuition
Don’t be misguided by others
“Trust thyself”

11. More on…Transcendentalism
A literary movement in the 1830s that established a clear “American voice”.
Emerson first expressed
his philosophy in his essay
“Nature”.

12. More on… Transcendentalism
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.

13. More on…Transcendentalism:
Believed in living close to nature
The importance of nature: Nature is the source of truth and inspiration.

14. More on…Transcendentalism
Taught the dignity of manual labor
Advocated self-trust and confidence
Valued individuality, non-conformity, and free thought
Advocated self-reliance and simplicity

15. Nature Nature Nature!

16. More on…. TRANSCENDENTALISM
The Transcendentalists led the search for truth
in nature
through self-reliance
“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” Emerson

18. TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS
OVERSOUL:
man, universe, and nature are intertwined
man universe nature

19. TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS
RELATIONSHIP:
all has its place

20. TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS
OPTIMISTIC:
all is good
evil is an illusion

21. TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS
INDIVIDUALISM:
be true to one’s own inner perception or intuition
If I know it is truth, then it is truth.

22. TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS
UNLIMITED POTENTIAL OF EACH INDIVIDUAL
set high goals to improve

23. TRANSCENDENTAL BELIEFS
NATURE IS TRUTH
it can be a guide to higher understanding
Nature symbolizes God
or the inner life of human beings

25. Influential Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau

26. RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1803-1882 Author Essayist Lecturer Philosopher
Unitarian minister
Poet
Founded the Transcendental Club
Banned from Harvard for 40 years following his Divinity School address
Supporter of abolitionism

27. Emerson’s Early Life Born on Election Day in 1803 in Boston, MA.
Born on the same street as the birth home of Benjamin Franklin.
Father was a famous minister who encouraged young Ralph to pursue philosophy at a young age.

28. Emerson’s Late Life and Death
Upset in the 1860s by the coming of the Civil War, lived a quiet life with his family.
His house burnt to the ground in 1872.
Died on April 27th, 1882.

29. “Self-reliance” -Emerson Quotes
“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”

30. Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862 School teacher Essayist Poet
Most famous for Walden and Civil Disobedience
Influenced environmental movement
Supporter of abolitionism

31. Thoreau’s ideas on “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

32. “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

33. PRESENT-DAY TRANSCENDENTALISM
The areas of thought created by the Transcendentalists were not confined to that time period. The ideas presented are relevant even today, especially in contemporary forms of art. Music, paintings, poetry, photography, even comic strips contain examples of Transcendental thought.
You just have to look carefully…

34. “Still we live meanly like ants
“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.”

35. Individuality
“How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.” -Thoreau

36. “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” -Thoreau

37. “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.”

38. “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

39. “[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.”

42. TRANSCENDENTALISM (also referred to as “American Romanticism”)