1. Romanticism Unit / Meyer English 11
Transcendentalism
Romanticism Unit / Meyer English 11
American transcendentalism is a kind of practice by which the world of facts and common sense are temporarily exchanged for the world of ideas and the imagination. The point of this exchange is to make life better by lifting us above the conflicts and struggles that weigh on our souls. As these chains fall away, our souls rise to heightened experiences of freedom and union with the good.

2. Transcendentalism (1836-1861)
American Romanticism gave rise to New England Transcendentalism, which had less restrictive relationships between humans, God, and universe.
Group led by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson
To find truth one must transcend (go beyond) the everyday experiences of the physical world
This was the only way to find truth about God, the universe, and oneself.
True reality is found in ideas, not the imperfect physical world.
Believed humanity could be perfected.
Transcendentalists do not revolt against religion. In fact, Emerson drew much of this thought from Puritanism. In the Bible God revealed himself through the physical world and nature.

3. Rules of Transcendentalism
The physical world is simply a doorway to the spiritual world
People can use intuition to sense God in nature or in their own souls. Your inner soul leads to truth.
A person is his or her own best authority.
Individual relationships with God were better than anything you could get from the church.
The mind is all you need to find knowledge.
Feeling and intuition are superior to reason and intellect.
Anti-materialistic, anti-civilization, anti-conformist

4. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Strongly believed that God is good and works through nature.
Emerson and others sought to find man’s relation with nature in solitude amidst nature and in their writing.
Emerson’s optimism appealed to many people who lived in a time full of worries about money, slavery, and future of our nation.
Emerson gave them a comforting message. If the world depresses you, look within yourself.
The God within will connect you to the peace and beauty of the universe.

5. Emerson’s Transparent Eyeball
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement
Therefore, some of its ideas are a bit abstract (and strange!)
The transparent eyeball is a representation of an eye that is absorbent rather than reflective, and therefore takes in all that nature has to offer.
Emerson intends that the individual become one with nature, and the transparent eyeball is a tool to do that.
In this disembodied state, as a transparent eyeball,  Emerson claims, ‘I am nothing; I see all’.
The ‘all’ that Emerson seeks access is not simply harmony with nature or even knowledge, but perception of a deep unity between the human spirit and the natural world.

6. Henry David Thoreau Essayist, poet, philosopher, and activist
Best known for his collection of essays titled Walden (1854)
Also well known for his essay “Civil Disobedience,” an argument for disobedience to an unjust government
He was greatly against the civil war
His philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of Mahatma Gandhi and Marin Luther King, Jr.
Most of his writings deal with natural history and philosophy.

7. Paraphrasing Emerson
To better understand Emerson’s beliefs, we will work on paraphrasing his aphorisms.