1. Transcendentalism
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…

2. The Movement Goals of the Transcendentals
Through meditation, communion with nature, and work and art, man could transcend his senses and attain an understanding of beauty, goodness, and truth.
Goals of the Transcendentals
Question the pervasive cultural forms
Change community
Rethink Philosophy
Reform education
Reintegrate spirit and matter that the Romantics and Gothics separated
Turn ideas into action
Improve public education
End slavery
Elevate the status of women
Improve social conditions
Transcendentals saw pervasive cultural forms of the 19 century as detrimental to the individual. Tenement housing, poor education, an every growing strong centralized government that was intent on expanding westward no matter the cost were all factors that the Transcendentalists felt were curtailing the potential and abilities of the individual to grow and ‘transcend’ their physical experience and experience the Divine Truth of existence.
As such, they pushed for reforms and non conformity. Margaret Fuller and those on her side (so to speak) pushed for community and social reforms, believing that once the community was improved, then the individual could prosper.
Emerson and Thoreau and their buddies were the opposite, They felt that a stronger focus on the individual and nonconformity would lead to individual improvement, and with those improvements, societal reform would naturally occur.
Both groups were interested in putting their ideas into practice – rather than writing about them or just practicing the philosophy like the Romantics did. So they were the ‘boots on the ground’ in the mid to late 1800s.
The division about how to best accomplish their goals eventually led the movement to its own demise, but its influence can be felt throughout modern history. The push for social reform and equal opportunity vs the push for self reliance and individuality that is inherent in the liberal and conservative political and social mindsets.

3. The Movement Influences
Shapes politics – undermines the authority of institutions
Education
Move away from rote memory
Exploration of thought through language
Demonstration of mastery through conversation and analysis
Knowledge is connected to and influences spirituality
Students become educators; teachers are facilitators
Social reform
Abolition is one primary goal
Redefines relation of individual to government
Transcendentalists would not have called themselves Christians, or of any religious affiliation – at least not as we know the term today. Organized religion, they felt (especially organized churches which had been built on the Puritan and evangelical paradigms of the past) only served to create conformity. Same with major political groups and policies, and education.

4. Concepts of Transcendentalism
Spirituality
Philosophy
Undermines concept of ‘original sin’
If we are a ‘blank slate,’ then how can we be innately sinful?
Sensory testimony of Jesus’ power – flesh testifies to word (not on faith, but on tangible experience
Authority to events outside conscious
Matter over spirit to shape the mind
How does the mind KNOW the world?
Refutes theory of tabula rasa
Locke believed that knowledge comes from experience
Recognizing higher ideas  richer experiences
Individual intuition and perception shapes experience
Locke’s tabula rasa postulates that human beings are born as blank slates, that all of our knowledge and personality and character is shaped by our sensual experience of the world – that we are nothing until we have experiences.
Transcendentalists prefer Kant’s theory that there are some truths that the mind just knows without experience. That there is an ‘intuition of the mind’ that is derived from the Divine Soul and it imparts to us wisdom and knowledge before we ever experience anything. Sort of a priori truths, if you will. As such, that ‘intuition’ must be taken as truth, and our faith in it colors how we experience the world.
Another reason that the Transcendentals shied away from Locke was the idea that Locke didn’t absolve the concept of ‘original sin.’ But, if humans were blank slates, then how could they be innately sinful.

5. Transcendentalist’s View of the World
Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul.
Each individual soul is made up of the same stuff as the Universal Soul.
The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world (the spiritual world is simply a reflection of the natural world and vice-versa)
People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or their own souls.

6. Transcendentalist’s View of the World
Self-Reliance and Individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition
Like Romanticism, the individual is the most important
Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality (like Romanticism)