1. What does the word “Transcendentalism” mean”
Happy Monday!
What does the word “Transcendentalism” mean”
Transcendental: Beyond the limits of
ordinary experience
ism: practice of

2. Word List 6:2 Word Meaning Meaning: Jovial
Having or expressing humor; jolly
Wistful
Sad; depressed; melancholy
Acerbic
Sour or bitter tasting; acid
Abstruse
Not easy to understand
Nostalgic
A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past
Part of Speech:
Jovial
Examples:
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3. Meaning:
Meaning:
Part of Speech:
Part of Speech:
Wistful
Acerbic
Examples:
Examples:
Visual
Visual

4. Meaning:
Meaning:
Part of Speech:
Part of Speech:
Abstruse
Nostalgic
Examples:
Examples:
Visual
Visual

5. Transcendentalism

6. What does “transcendentalism” mean?
There is an ideal spiritual state which “transcends” the physical…
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.

7. 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.

8. Basic Premise #1: The Power of the Individual
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 God, but a preference to explain an individual and the world in terms of an individual.

9. Basic Premise #2: All Knowledge begins with self-knowledge
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."

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

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

12. Who were the Transcendentalists?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Amos Bronson Alcott
Margaret Fuller
Ellery Channing

13. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 Unitarian minister Poet and essayist
Founded the Transcendental Club
Popular lecturer
Banned from Harvard for 40 years following his Divinity School address
Supporter of abolitionism

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

15. Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862 Schoolteacher, essayist, poet
Most famous for Walden and Civil Disobedience
Influenced environmental movement
Supporter of abolitionism

16. Thoreau’s Walden
“I went to 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 had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. “

17. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”

18. Amos Bronson Alcott 1799-1888 Teacher and writer
Founder of Temple School and Fruitlands
Introduced art, music, P.E., nature study, and field trips; banished corporal punishment
Father of novelist Louisa May Alcott

19. Margaret Fuller 1810-1850 Journalist, critic, women’s rights activist
First editor of The Dial, a transcendental journal
First female journalist to work on a major newspaper—The New York Tribune
Taught at Alcott’s Temple School

20. Ellery Channing 1818-1901 Poet and especially close friend of Thoreau
Published the first biography of Thoreau in 1873—Thoreau, The Poet-Naturalist

21. Major Themes: Nonconformity
“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 which he hears, however measured or far away.”

22. Major Themes: Self-Reliance
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…”

23. Major Themes: Free Thought
“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government let it go…but if it 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 a counter friction to stop the machine.”

24. Major Themes: Importance of Nature
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience”
“Earth laughs in flowers.”
“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.”

25. Major Themes: Confidence
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
“A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

26. Thoreau’s Walden
“I went to 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 had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. “

27. Happy Tuesday!
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and have lived well”

28. Happy Wednesday!
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is not path and leave a trail.”

29. Happy Thursday! “I wanted to live deep and
suck out all the marrow of life.”

30. Happy Friday! Word Meaning Jovial Having or expressing humor; jolly
Wistful
Sad; depressed; melancholy
Acerbic
Sour or bitter tasting; acid
Abstruse
Not easy to understand
Nostalgic
A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past