Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism Background

• An intellectual movement founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a minister who was educated at Harvard. (He was a Harvard freshman at age 14!!!).

• Emerson’s first wife died at age 19. After her death, Emerson resigned his position as a minister and developed the Transcendentalist philosophy—not a new religion, but a new belief that placed importance on the individual.

Transcendentalist Beliefs

• Human senses are limited, and merely help us understand the physical world; deeper truths can only be reached through intuition (instinct).

• Observing nature helps us understand ourselves. Nature is proof that God exists.

• God, nature, and humanity are united in a shared universal soul (also called the Over-Soul).

Where did it come from?

• Transcendentalism began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church.

• It is not a religion—more accurately, it is a philosophy or form of spirituality.

• It centered around Boston and Concord, MA. in the mid-1800’s.

• Emerson first expressed his philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay Nature.

Basic Premise #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 universe itself.

Basic Premise #2

The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self. All knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge.

Basic Premise #3

Transcendentalists accepted the concept of nature as a living mystery, full of signs.

More Basic Premises

Individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization. In other words, you can’t be happy until you know yourself and “become who you are.”

Transcendentalists desired to embrace the whole world—to know and become one with the world.