April 26, 2021

What is Transcendentalism
An American literary movement that emphasized the
importance and equality of the individual, idealism and the
divinity of nature.
by Martin Kelly and Jone 1. What central ideas held all Transcendentalist authors, poets
Johnson Lewis and philosophers together

2. What were the Transcendentalists rebelling against? What

did they see as the current situation? What were they trying
to be di erent from

Central Transcendentalist Idea

• Self-relianc

• Individual Conscienc

• Intuition over reaso

• Unity of all things in natur

Individual men and women can be their own authority on

knowledge through the use of their intuition and conscience.
Societal and governmental institutions have corrupting e ects
on the individual, hence should not be trusted.

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Understanding Contex
• A generation of well-educated people who lived in the
decades before the American Civil War and the national
division that it both re ected and helped to creat

• mostly New Englanders, mostly around Boston, attempted

to create a uniquely American body of literature.

• decades since the Americans had won independence from

England. Now, Transcendentalists believed, it was time for
literary independenc

• And so they deliberately went about creating literature,

essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writing that
were clearly di erent from anything from England, France,
Germany, or any other European nation

• a generation of people struggling to de ne spirituality and

religion in a way that took into account the new
understandings their age made availabl

• new Biblical Criticism in Germany and elsewhere had been

looking at the Christian and Jewish scriptures through the
eyes of literary analysis and had raised questions for some
about the old assumptions of religio

• The Enlightenment had come to new rational conclusions

about the natural world, mostly based on experimentation
Transcendentalists believed it was and logical thinking
time for literary independence.
• a more Romantic way of thinking—less rational, more
intuitive, more in touch with the senses—was gaining
popularity

• German philosopher Kant raised both questions and insights

into the religious and philosophical thinking about reason
and religion, and how one might root ethics in human
experience and reason rather than divine command

• This new generation looked at the previous generation's

rebellions of the early 19th century Unitarians and
Universalists against traditional Trinitarianism and against
Calvinist predestinationarianism

• This new generation decided that the revolutions had not

gone far enough, and had stayed too much in the rational

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mode. "Corpse-cold" is what Emerson called the previous

generation of rational religio

• The spiritual hunger of the age in the educated centers in

New England and around Boston, gave rise to an intuitive,
experiential, passionate, more-than-just-rational perspective.
God gave humankind the gift of intuition, the gift of insight,
the gift of inspiration. Why waste such a gift

• Added to all this, the scriptures of non-Western cultures

were discovered in the West, translated, and published so
that they were more widely available. The Harvard-educated
Emerson and others began to read Hindu and Buddhist
scriptures and examine their own religious assumptions
against these scriptures. In their perspective, a loving God
would not have led so much of humanity astray; there must
be truth in these scriptures, too. Truth, if it agreed with an
individual's intuition of truth, must be indeed truth

• And so Transcendentalism was born. In the words of Ralph

Waldo Emerson, "We wi walk on our own feet; we wi work
with our own hands; we wi speak our own minds… A nation of
men wi for the rst time exist, because each believes himself
inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires a men.

• Most of the Transcendentalists became involved in social

reform movements, especially anti-slavery and women's
right

Key Facts & Figure

• Ralph Waldo Emerson was the uno cial leader of the
movemen

• Henry David Thoreau decided to practice self-reliance by

moving to Walden Pond, on land owned by Emerson, and
build his own cabin where he lived for two years (Walden: Or
Life in the Woods)

• Because of beliefs in self-reliance and individualism,

Transcendentalists became huge proponents of progressive
reforms to help individuals nd their own voices and
achieve their fullest potential. Margaret Fuller argued that
all sexes were equal and should be treated as such.
Abolitionists fought to end slavery. Other progressive
movements espoused rights of those in prison, help for the

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poor and better treatment of those who were in mental

institutions

• Transcendentalism is deeply rooted in faith and

spirituality as transcendentalists believed in the
possibility of personal communication with God
leading to understanding of reality. Transcendentalists found
and communed with God in gentle breezes, dense forests
and other creations of nature. Many of its followers
remained in the Unitarian church not Trinitarian

• Transcendentalism in uenced American writers who helped

create a national literary identity

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