1. Transcendentalism
Take the quiz to find out if you are a Transcendentalist and don’t even know it!

2. What does it mean to transcend?
To move beyond or above or independent of the earthly or normal
To surpass or excel
When have you felt transcendent?

3. Beginnings of Transcendentalism
It was a reform movement in the Unitarian Church and included many well educated people from New England
Pastor William Ellery Channing taught that the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains.
We can know this and other truths through INTUITION.
What is intuition?
Are you an intuitive person?

4. Transcendentalism was a reaction against…
New England Calvinism (Deism)
Locke’s ideas
People who thought nature was scary, incomprehensible, and a struggle between good and evil – life and death
People who thought optimism and idealism was naïve or unrealistic
People who thought human nature was evil
People who thought individualism was selfish or dangerous or should be given up for the greater good of the whole of society

5. Transcendentalists were influenced by…
Immanuel Kant’s principle that intuitive knowledge does not come from our senses
They liked the Romantic poets and literature (Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other British poets) and thus their writing mimicked the elevated and elaborate style
Eastern philosophy like Buddhism (discovering divinity within oneself)
The women’s rights movement
The Civil Rights movement
Transcendentalists influenced…

6. Transcendentalists believe in the individual
Through one’s individualism, one feels the connection to all beings
The individual can experience god first hand through intuition and nature
The individual is godlike and innately good – society is blamed for corruption of the individual
One should value your own self-reliance over relying on society

7. Transcendentalists believe in intuition
“understanding” is knowledge based off senses and logic
“reason” is knowledge through a higher, more intuitive or mystical form of perception
We don’t need to rely only on our 5 senses to understand our world and our place in the world – we can receive revelation from God or notice God in nature

8. Transcendentalists believe in perfection, optimism, and idealism
Stand up if you were given a quote to read to the class… these quotes are by Henry David Thoreau, one of the premiere Transcendentalists in early America. We will be reading excerpts from his essay “Civil Disobedience.”
Listen to the quotes and think about how they represent Transcendentalist thought.

9. Henry David Thoreau 1817-62 best known for writing Walden
Graduated from Harvard and became a teacher
Taken in by Emerson and wrote for his transcendentalist journal
Abolitionist
Died of TB

10. Written in 1846, after his year alone at Walden Pond
Thoreau is arrested for not paying a poll tax which is a tax that you had to pay if you wanted to vote (it was a roadblock for the poor and African Americans)
He only spent one night in jail since his aunt paid the tax for him (with out his permission)
Civil Disobedience
By Thoreau

11. Paying taxes is one way in which otherwise well-meaning people collaborate in injustice. People who proclaim that the war in Mexico is wrong and that it is wrong to enforce slavery contradict themselves if they fund both things by paying taxes. Thoreau points out that the same people who applaud soldiers for refusing to fight an unjust war are not themselves willing to refuse to fund the government that started the war.
In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken. Abolitionists, in Thoreau's opinion, should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if this means courting imprisonment.
Civil Disobedience
By Thoreau

12. Under what circumstances would you be willing to go to jail for a moral or political principle?
OR Alternatively, explain why you wouldn’t be willing to commit civil disobedience under any circumstances.
Journal

13. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-82 Son of a Unitarian pastor
Dad died when Emerson was 8
Graduated from Harvard as a minister
Young wife died of TB and he resigned from the ministry
Developed a Transcendental journal called The Dial
Lectured all over the country (over 1,500 lectures)

14. List ways in which you are self-reliant (do things on your own)
In your journal, list ways in which you are reliant on others (parents, friends, teachers, government, church, coach, team…)
List ways in which you are self-reliant (do things on your own)
What is the importance of self reliance in your own life?
Self-Reliance
By Emerson