1. American Romanticism 1800-1860
Highest knowledge comes from nature, inner experience, intuition, and imagination.
Shun artificiality of civilization and educated sophistication in favor of unspoiled nature and youthful innocence

2. a priori “one prior”, “from the one before”
Knowledge that works from generalizations or principals to particulars as opposed to knowledge that works from experience and observations to derive principals and laws. (a posteriori)

3. existing in the mind prior to and independent of experience
A Priori (continued)
existing in the mind prior to and independent of experience
Derived by or designating the process of reasoning without reference to particular facts or experience.

4. A Priori (continued)
EX. Nature is God’s greatest gift and, therefore, the best teacher
to know God you have to know His creation, in which he exists
Meditate on some object in nature to get in touch with knowledge that already exists within us.
The principals of nature teach us experience.

5. Romanticism (continued)
Values individuality
Skeptical of progress, values wisdom of the past
Allusions/historical references
Myth, legend, and folklore
Beauty in the exotic, supernatural
Poetry as highest expression of imagination

6. American Romantic Hero
Youthful innocence
Sense of honor not based on society
Intuitive understanding of people and life
Loves nature, avoids town life
Quest for higher truth in natural world

7. Transcendentalism
Everything is a reflection of a Divine Soul (Emerson, parachute)
The natural world is the doorway to the spiritual world
Use intuition to commune with God in nature or self

8. Transcendentalism
Self-Reliance, individualism, non-conformity
Spontaneous feelings and intuition over reason (Thoreau’s “Whim”; ice cream cone example)

9. Kant’s Metaphysics
Noumenon: The “thing-in-itself” an object or event independent of the senses; the essence and root of things which we can never perceive
Phenomenon: That which we can perceive -- appearances

10. Dark Romantics Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville
Agreed with the transcendental idea of intuition and natural world over reason
Disagreed with optimism of Transcendentalists
Emphasis on Puritan ideas of Original Sin, predestination, and finding symbols in everything
Explored the conflicts between good and evil, the psychological effects of guilt and sin, and madness