1. NOTE: To change the image on this slide, select the picture and delete it. Then click the Pictures icon in the placeholder to insert your own image. TRANSCENDENTALISM Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball…

2. The Movement  Goals of the Transcendentals  Question the pervasive cultural forms  Change community  Rethink Philosophy  Reform education  Reintegrate spirit and matter that the Romantics and Gothics separated  Turn ideas into action  Improve public education  End slavery  Elevate the status of women  Improve social conditions Through meditation, communion with nature, and work and art, man could transcend his senses and attain an understanding of beauty, goodness, and truth.

3. The Movement  Influences  Shapes politics – undermines the authority of institutions  Education  Move away from rote memory  Exploration of thought through language  Demonstration of mastery through conversation and analysis  Knowledge is connected to and influences spirituality  Students become educators; teachers are facilitators  Social reform  Abolition is one primary goal  Redefines relation of individual to government

4. Concepts of Transcendentalism Philosophy  How does the mind KNOW the world?  Refutes Locke’s theory of tabula rasa  Knowledge comes from experience  Recognizing higher ideas  richer experiences  Individual intuition and perception shapes experience Spirituality  Undermines concept of ‘original sin’  If we are a ‘blank slate,’ then how can we be innately sinful?  Sensory testimony of Jesus’ power – flesh testifies to word (not on faith, but on tangible experience  Authority to events outside conscious  Matter over spirit to shape the mind

5. Transcendentalist’s View of the World  Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul.  Each individual soul is made up of the same stuff as the Universal Soul.  The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world (the spiritual world is simply a reflection of the natural world and vice-versa)  People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or their own souls.

6. Transcendentalist’s View of the World  Self-Reliance and Individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition  Like Romanticism, the individual is the most important  Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality (like Romanticism)