1. American Transcendentalism
“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person: always do what you are afraid to do.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. Transcendentalism
A literary movement in the 1830s in the Boston, Massachusetts area that established a clear “American voice.”
Emerson first expressed his philosophy of transcendentalism in his essay Nature.
A loose collection of eclectic ideas about literature, philosophy, religion, social reform, and the general state of American culture.

3. What does “Transcendentalism” mean?
Transcend means, “to rise above or go beyond; overpass; exceed”
There is an ideal spiritual state which “transcends” the physical and empirical.
There is a higher reality than that achieved by human reasoning.
*It is not a religion-more accurately, it is a philosophy or form of spirituality.

4. “In the faces of men and women, I see God.” - Walt Whitman
Unlike Puritans, they saw humans and nature as possessing an inherent goodness.
Opposed strict ritualism and dogmas of organized religion
“In the faces of men and women, I see God.” Walt Whitman

5. Belief #1 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*
*Doesn‘t reject God, but prefers
to view the world in terms of the
individual’s place in it.

6. Belief #2
Nature is a living mystery, full of signs; nature is symbolic.

8. Belief #3
We need to realize and find a balance between two universal tendencies:
Our desire to embrace the whole world-to know and become ONE with the world.
Our desire to withdraw, to remain unique and separate from the world.

9. Additional Beliefs: Transcendentalists: Believed in living close to
nature because nature is the source of truth and inspiration
Taught the dignity in manual labor

10. Emphasized self-trust and confidence
Valued individuality, non-conformity and free thought.
Advocated self-reliance and simplicity.

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

12. 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

13. “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…”
“Trust thyself.”
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think…”
“…to be great is to
be misunderstood.”

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

15. WALDEN Thoreau began “essential” living
Built a cabin on land owned by Emerson in Concord, Mass. near Walden Pond
Lived alone for two years
studying nature and
seeking truth within
himself.

16. “I went into 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 has to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
-H.D. Thoreau

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

19. “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 he hears, however measured or far away.”

20. “Civil Disobedience”
Thoreau’s essay urging passive, non-violent resistance to governmental policies to which an individual is morally opposed.
Influenced individuals such as Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.