Transcendentalism, Part 1: Definitions, Roots and Beginnings
Chalice Lighting
Surface Existing Knowledge and Questions in Room
Define (Not-Define)
What were the roots/context of Transcendentalist movement?
• 5 Influences - did Transcendentalism react against or arise out of these?
Hedge's Clubs x`
Emerson - Nature (1836); Divinity School Address (1838); Transcendentalist (1842),
Self-Reliance (1841)
Discussion
• How do you see this playing out today? What threads are present in our own
congregation? In our wider culture? What are the gifts and what are the curses
we inherit from the transcendentalists?
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Empiricism and Rationalism as Exemplified
by John Locke and David Hume
Rationalism (17th/18th century): Knowledge can be attained by reason alone, without
experience
Empiricism(17th/18th century): Knowledge is created based on experience
John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704):
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“Father of Classical Liberalism”
Leading thinker in new concepts of identity and the self - defined the self through
a continuity of consciousness - knowledge is determined through sense
experience
Asserted cannot dictate religious thinking - so there can be no single “true
religion”
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Human nature is characterized by reason and tolerance; in our natural state all
are equal and independent
Tabula Rasa - we are born not sinful or good but simply a blank slate and we
become who we are based on experiences
David Hume (7 May 1711 - 25 August 1776):
• One of the founders of empiricism - knowledge is based on what you can
experience by your senses and tangible evidence
• Reason is supreme o Idea of clockmaker, world is a machine - a well constructed machine therefore there must be a great clockmaker
o Reason is a universal feature of humanity - takes different forms, but
everyone has it so it must be good
• We understand everything based on our experiences o Agreed with Locke’s concept of the self - we are born a blank slate and
everything that is in your mind came in through one of the five senses and
these experiences come to form our knowledge - i.e. How certain are you
that the sun will come up tomorrow, and why?
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We are very certain – because every day that we’ve been alive the
sun has come up – all experience of sun coming up and no
experience of sun not coming up
 We learn to trust everything based on our own experiences
o Anti-miracles because we can’t rely on others’ testimony,we must
experience them ourselves
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Immanuel Kant, Fredrich Schleiermacher and German Idealism
German Idealism: ~1780 - ~1840s
• Most influential thinkers: Kant, Fichte, Herder, Schelling, Hegel and
Schleiermacher
• Linked with Romanticism and Enlightenment
• Basic definition: what we understand about a given thing is not inherent to the
thing but rather depends on how we perceive the thing. We give things
properties/functions based in our experiences of them, rather than anything
having some kind of inherent/eternal property/function. Basically nothing has
meaning outside of the meaning we give it.
• Emphasized a certain naturalistic and organic mysticism, divinity in nature and
value of human emotions
Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804):
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Epitomizes the “turn to the self” of the Enlightenment - before Kant we talked
about “the world out there” and after Kant we talk about “what does the world
look like to me”
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We can know the phenomena revealed to us by our senses, but we can never
know the form the form that lies behind that sense experience - we can never
really know “the thing itself” - we can never really have a “direct experience” as
all experience is mediated through our senses
Knowledge transcends - or goes beyond - experience - all knowledge is
transcendental
The human self is not just a “bundle” of sensations like Hume said but rather a
transcendental unity of the apperception
Kant calls his conclusion: Transcental idealism
Using reason without applying experience only leads to theoretical illusions
Fredrich Schleiermacher (November 21, 1768 – February 12, 1834)
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“Father of Liberal Theology”
5 Treatises - Targeted to Kant and other contemporaries - On Religion, To Its
Cultured Despisers
o Talked about the idea of a “Pure Religion” (same term used by Emerson
and Thoreau)
o People don’t go to church to get the truth from external authority - the
individual experiences an “intuition” of a greater truth and then since each
person’s experience and understanding is limited, the person goes to
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church to share this sense of truth with others and to expand their piece
through dialogue and interaction
Religious Establishment - both liberal and conservative
Religious Establishment of early 19th century - Calvinism, Unitarianism, Great
Awakening….
Unitarianism was dominant religion within Boston in early 19th century
• Continued reaction to Great Awakening and its emotionalism - favored strong
rationalism and seriousness
• Strong emphasis on rationalism and value of intellectual reason as a path to
divine wisdom
• Unitarianism of the time prioritized stability, harmony, rational thought,
progressive morality, and classical learning and the ability of the individual
through intellect to figured out what was right
• Deplored excessive emotionalism
• Maintained a certain orthodoxy in allegiance to scripture, tradition
Calvinism continued to be another major religious force within religious
establishment
• Considered human nature as inherently evil/sinful and worthy of suspicion untrustworthy
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American Values of Democracy
By the early 19th century, American values were firmly established:
• Individual liberty, equality, self-determination
• Highly influenced by Enlightment which questioned authority of the monarch to
rule - what gives one person the right to rule another?
• A balance between liberty and order
• Encouraged free-thinking and capacity of humans to use reason in pursuit of “life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness”
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Religious freedom
Emphasis on individual and independence
Question: Will America be original or simply a derivation of European culture and
philosophy?
But these values must be put in the context of slavery’s existence - what was
needed?
American in early 19th Century:
Populaist Democrats opposing more conservative Whigs - but both parties supported
few significant change except to expand land ownership of US; failing to address new
needs of industrialization and treatment of workers
Confrontations arose about rights of others - but women, slaves, and Native Americans
were pretty much ignored by both political parties
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Eastern religions, including Bhagavad-Gita and Vedas
New awareness of world religions raised awareness of Christianity’s relative newcomer
status; many before this period had no idea such texts existed
Bhagavad Gita:
• 700 verse Hindu scripture that is a part of the Mahbarata
• Teaches concepts of dharma, bhakti, and moksha, and other eastern
philosophical concepts
• Calls for selfless action
Vedas:
• Oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and oldest scriptures of Hinduism; includes:
o Hymns, prayers to be recited by a priest, chants for a priest, spells and
incantations.
o Rituals and their meanings
o Stories and literature
• Individual lines are known as mantras.
Laws of Manu:
• Oldest and most important work of one of the traditions of Hinduism
• Referenced by Nietzsche who called it superior to the Christian Bible and
supported the caste-order it promoted
James Freeman Clarke and Ralph Waldo Emerson were among the Transcendentalists
who were reading a lot of world religions and bringing it into American conversation
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Hedge’s Club
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Also known as Transcendental Club - around 1830s
Named after member Henry Hedge, a Unitarian minister
Symposium and forum for discussion and development of new ideas
Especially attracted young thinkers to give them a place to speak their idealist
frustrations with state of American culture and society, especially what they were
experiencing at Harvard and within Unitarianism
Generated Transcendentalist publication, The Dial
Members included: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret
Fuller, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, George Putnam, William Ellery Channing,
James Freeman Clarke, Elizabeth Peabody, Sophia Ripley, Orestes Brownson,
Theodore Parker and others
Exciting conversation and often equally energetic disagreement
For example: “What is the essence of religion as distinct from morality?” 1836 or “Is Mysticism an element of Christianity?” in 1838
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Ended meeting around 1840
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Transcendentalism, Part 2: Emerson, Women and Social Reform
Chalice Lighting (Channing: I call that church free)
Sing - Rebecca Parker transcendentalist hymn
Definition of Transcendentalism
Emerson - Nature (1836); Divinity School Address (1838); Transcendentalist (1842),
Self-Reliance (1841)
Questions:
• Though he personally was unable to abide by an organized religion, is hyper
individualism a necessary outcome of his ideas? What does it mean to
emphasize the trusting of an inner light?
• How does Emerson deal with evil? He was criticized often for unchecked
optimism. How can you imagine combining ideas about evil with Emerson’s
philosophy?
Outcomes:
- Utopian Societies
- Educational Experiments
- Social Reform
Women in Transcendentalism
- Margaret Fuller
- Louisa May Alcott
- Elizabeth Peabody
Discussion
• How do you see Transcendentalism playing out today? What threads are
present in our own congregation? In our wider culture? What are the gifts and
what are the curses we inherit from the transcendentalists?
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Ralph Waldo Emerson - May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882
Ordained as Unitarian Minister in 1829, resigned in 1832 because he didn’t want to offer
communion because he felt it had become an empty ritual
Never really suited to parish ministry
Nature - 1836
• Tries to capture the feeling he has experienced in the woods - that “transcendent
moment” -
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“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; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through
me; I am part or particle of God.”
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“In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall
me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot
repair. 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; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate
through me; I am part or parcel of God.”
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Natural Theology + mysticism + Moral development = nature and mind reflect
each other and God which Emerson calls “correspondence”
Divinity School Address - 1838
• Critique of ministry
• Calls miracles a monster
• Renounced the "corpse-cold Unitarianism of Brattle Street and Harvard College"
• Worship the principles of Jesus but not his person
• Advises grads to stay in the denomination to improve it
• Perhaps most controversial work
• His responder: Andrews Norton who calls it “The Latest Form of Infidelity” saying
that a person cannot attain assurance of eternal life unassisted
• Also responded: Ware, Jr. who says a notion of “Father God” is essential
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“The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of
the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and
not subject to circumstance. Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose
retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed, is instantly
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ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. He who
puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man
is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God,
the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble,
deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being.
A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step
so downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to
himself.”
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“Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before
every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern
condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand.
Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from
another soul.”
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“The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,
— life passed through the fire of thought... (H)istorical Christianity destroys the
power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of
man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and
power...”
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“Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even
those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without
mediator or veil... let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms
already existing.”
The Transcendentalists - 1842
• Defined the philosophy in detail
• “The transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He
believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of
light and power; he believes in inspiration and in ecstasy…”
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“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the better.”
Self-Reliance - 1841
• Mis-represented by its title - might be better titled “Soul reliance” than “self”
because it is not so much about individualism than it is about the “ideal “self.
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“Whosoever would be a man must be a nonconformist.”
Individuals answer to a private inner voice, and individuals make their own
religions
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“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think”
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“Trust thyself”
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen
and philosophers and divines.”
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The Over-Soul - 1841
• Addresses the existence of the human soul, the relationship between the soul
and the ego, the relationship of one soul to another, and the relationship of the
soul to God
• Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest
person, who in his integrity worships God, becomes God.
• “[T]hat great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the
atmosphere [is] that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular
being is contained and made one with all other. . . .”
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“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is
the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part
and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we
exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and
perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the
spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece,
as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are
shining parts, is the soul.”
Personal Notes:
• Loved his first wife so much he exhumed her and opened her coffin in 1832 to
see her once more
• Despaired after death of his 5 year old son Waldo - led to a great doubt of any
justice in the universe
• Believed he could depend on intuited version of inner self in a way he had not
been able to depend on ideas of God being worshiped from pulpits of New
England
• Desired to link his ideas to social concerns - always wanted to link to reform
movements including abolition and women’s rights
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Never actually approved of the term “Transcendentalism” and preferred the term
“Idealism” Once said that Transcendentalism was simply a protest against
dogmatic religion not a philosophy but a spiritual outlook
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Outcomes from Transcendentalism:
- Utopian Societies
- Educational Experiments
- Social Reform
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Margaret Fuller
Margaret Fuller was born Sarah Margaret Fuller on May 23, 1810 in Cambridgeport,
Massachusetts. She was a very intelligent, even precocious, child who received an
intense education from her father, Timothy Fuller, learning Greek and Latin at a very
early age. Her father was a prominent lawyer and later a Congressman. She attended
several schools and continued to educate herself, learning German and Italian, and
would soon do translations of Goethe and Bettina von Arnim. Her father's death brought
financial problems for the family, and she became responsible for the education of her
younger siblings. She taught school, especially at Bronson Alcott's Temple School and
the Green Street School in Providence, RI, for two years, but that gave her too little time
for her writing.
In 1839 she she established formal conversations on various topics, primarily for
women, which were very successful for five years. She was close friends with most of
the intellectuals of Boston and Concord, particularly Emerson, and would spend weeks
at a time visiting in his home, teaching him German and talking. She was evidently a
brilliant and thoughtful conversationalist, much respected for her intellect and learning,
although friends often had problems dealing with her mercurial emotions. From 1840 to
1842, she served with Emerson as editor of The Dial. In 1843, The Dial published her
essay The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men, Woman versus Women in which she called
for women's equality.
In 1844, after an extensive trip west, she published Summer on the Lakes. Charmed by
the book, Horace Greeley asked her to join his newspaper, the New York Tribune as
book review editor, and she became quite successful, branching into art and cultural
reviews. In 1845 she expanded her Dial essay and published Woman in the Nineteenth
Century, which became a classic of feminist thought.
In 1846, as foreign correspondent for the Tribune. Fuller traveled to Europe and sent
back articles about letters and art in Europe, meeting many well-known European
writers and intellectuals. Once she got to Italy, in 1847, she became involved in the
revolution and decided not to return to America for a while. She fell in love with
Marchese Giovanni Angelo d'Ossoli, a much younger man of the petty nobility and a
fellow revolutionary. They had a child a year later, a son named Angelo, and perhaps
married the following year. During the of Revolution of 1848 and during the siege of
Rome by the French forces, Fuller assumed charge of one of the hospitals of the city,
while her husband took part in the fighting.
When the revolution failed, they decided to sail to America, in May 1850. Her
premonitions of disaster proved true; the ship's captain died of smallpox, and his less
accomplished replacement ran the ship aground in a storm off of Fire Island, New York,
on July 19, 1850. Although in sight of land, she, Ossoli, and Angelo drowned as the ship
went down. Her friends sent Thoreau to the wreckage, looking for her manuscript or any
other remains, but they were lost to the sea and scavengers.
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Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She
and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May, were educated by their father,
philosopher/ teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their
mother, Abigail May.
Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days
were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, and excursions into nature
with Henry David Thoreau.
Like her character, "Jo March" in Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy. "No boy
could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race," she claimed, "and no girl if she
refused to climb trees, leap fences ..." For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She
had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her
sisters would act out for friends. Louisa preferred to play the "lurid" parts in these plays
--"the villains, ghosts, bandits, and disdainful queens."
At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed: "I will do
something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the
family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!"
Confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women seeking employment,
Louisa determined, "... I will make a battering-ram of my head and make my way
through this rough and tumble world." Whether as a teacher, seamstress, governess, or
household servant, for many years Louisa did any work she could find.
Louisa’s career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in
popular magazines. In 1854, when she was 22, her first book Flower Fables was
published. A milestone along her literary path was Hospital Sketches (1863), based on
the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington, DC during the
Civil War.
When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher in Boston, Thomas Niles, asked her to
write "a book for girls." Little Women was written at Orchard House from May to July
1868. The novel is based on Louisa and her sisters’ coming of age and is set in Civil
War New England. "Jo March" was the first American juvenile heroine to act from her
own individuality --a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype then
prevalent in children’s fiction.
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In all, Louisa published over 30 books and collections of stories. She died on March 6,
1888, only two days after her father, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in
Concord.
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Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) devoted her long and full life to the expression
of Transcendental idealism in a variety of forms. Greatly admired by some of her
contemporaries as a model of passionate commitment, sympathy, and learning, she
was dismissed by others as meddlesome and absent-minded.
Teacher and educational reformer, founder of the kindergarten in America, abolitionist,
opponent of European autocratic despotism, friend of political refugees, advocate of
Native American rights and education, of woman's suffrage, and of world peace, Miss
Peabody worked unceasingly toward the improvement of society.
In the 1840s, she ran a circulating library and bookstore at 13 West Street in Boston,
providing the Transcendentalists with a gathering place and with volumes of foreign
literature and philosophy. Margaret Fuller conducted her famous "conversations" at 13
West Street. The Brook Farm utopian community was planned there.
Moreover, Elizabeth Peabody was a publisher at a time when few women were involved
in that business. Among the titles issued under her name were Dr. William Ellery
Channing's Emancipation (1840), Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair, Famous Old
People, and Liberty Tree (1841), two of the four volumes of the Transcendental
periodical the Dial (1842 and 1843), and the short-lived Aesthetic Papers (1849), which
included the first appearance in print of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. Miss Peabody
was also a gifted linguist, familiar with some dozen languages, and a prolific writer on
education, reform, language, history, art, and other topics.
Elizabeth Peabody was the sister-in-law of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who married
her sister Sophia in 1842, and educational reformer Horace Mann, who married her
sister Mary in 1843. She associated with all of the Transcendentalists, major and minor-Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, and
Jones Very among them. The company she kept has tended to eclipse her significance
and contributions. And yet, she outlived all of the key figures connected with
Transcendentalism, effectively extending the active influence of the movement almost to
the turn of the 20th century.
In both her writings and her reform efforts, Miss Peabody was motivated by a
comprehensive Transcendental vision of the origin of all matter and spirit and all human
activity in God, by a sense of the oneness of God, man, and nature. Perceiving God as
benevolent and humanity as morally and intellectually perfectible, she believed that her
efforts could help to transform individuals and society.
Elizabeth Peabody had a particular affinity for finding unity amidst all kinds of diversity-social, cultural, historical, aesthetic, and linguistic--and above all a powerful drive to
express her philosophical idealism in concrete ways.
Mrs. Peabody embraced the notion that each child should receive training appropriate
to his or her innate capabilities, an idea in harmony with Kant's concept of and the later
Transcendental belief in the intuitive nature of knowledge. Approached from this point of
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view, education was a matter of drawing out, not imposing, knowledge. The curriculum
followed by Mrs. Peabody to accomplish this end consisted of language, literature,
theology, philosophy, and history. The young Elizabeth Peabody was educated under
such a curriculum, which informed her sense of what should be taught to children.
Moreover, Mrs. Peabody strongly emphasized the moral and religious aspect of
education. In her own career as a teacher, Miss Peabody in turn never sharply
distinguished between spiritual and intellectual development. For her, as for her mother,
education was not an accumulation of facts but rather a life-long process that developed
the whole person.
Dr. William Ellery Channing--"the father of Unitarianism" and uncle of Concord poet
William Ellery Channing--also influenced Miss Peabody. From 1826 through the early
1830s, he served as the young woman's mentor, helping her to broaden her reading
and to think seriously about theology, literature, education, and reform. Channing
reinforced the connection that Peabody had already perceived between the spiritual, the
social, and the intellectual consciousness.
In 1832, she held the first of her "reading parties" or "conferences" for women. The
sessions consisted of reading, lecture, and dialogue on a particular topic, such as
ancient history or the causes of the French Revolution. An early form of continuing
education, this interactive process was in keeping with the Transcendental sense of
knowledge as intuitive. Margaret Fuller later capitalized on the technique.
Between 1879 and 1884, Miss Peabody attended and lectured at Bronson Alcott's
Concord School of Philosophy, another experiment in adult education.
From 1834 to 1836, Peabody served as Alcott's assistant at the Temple School in
Boston (so-called because it was held in the Masonic Temple at the corner of Tremont
Street and Temple Place). When Alcott returned to New England from Pennsylvania in
1834, Peabody was planning to open a school for boys in Boston. Rather than compete
with him for pupils, she encouraged him to set up his school, transferred to him the
students she had started to gather for her own school, and offered to assist him. Since
Peabody's thoughts on education coincided to a remarkable degree with Alcott's, their
collaboration started out auspiciously. Both believed that proper teaching elicited the
truth and moral sense within children, and that the Socratic question-and-answer
method was effective toward that end.
By 1859, Elizabeth Peabody was ready to take up the most significant educational work
of her life. In that year, she learned of German educator Friedrich Froebel, who had
worked with very young children and formulated an approach based on organized play,
the use of the hands and the senses, and involvement with nature. Froebel had
stressed that discipline shouldn't be based on force or fear and had recommended
physical exercise in school. His philosophy impressed Peabody.
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Elizabeth Palmer Peabody established the first formally organized American
kindergarten in Boston in 1860. In order better to understand Froebel's principles, she
traveled to Europe in 1867, and again in 1871. The first trip marked a turning point for
her. By the time she returned, she had decided to devote the rest of her life to writing
and lecturing on the kindergarten and to training kindergarten teachers. With missionary
zeal, she proselytized around the country, wrote and talked with people in positions of
power, and prepared scores of articles on the kindergarten. In 1873, she helped found
and became the first editor of the Kindergarten Messenger. In 1877, she organized and
became the first president of the American Froebel Union. While the spiritual and moral
focus of the kindergarten as Froebel had conceived of it was eventually dropped from
the movement, and while other advocates did not necessarily interpret Froebel as
literally as did Miss Peabody, the kindergarten became a part of American life due
largely to her exertions.
Despite frequent changes of outward circumstance and occupation, Elizabeth Peabody
exhibited throughout her life a remarkable constancy of motivation. She came to
maturity and spent her most vigorous years in a climate that nurtured faith in human
nature and capabilities. In the classroom, in the Foreign Library, and in her efforts on
behalf of oppressed individuals and groups, she demonstrated a pragmatic and abiding
determination to bring reality in line with philosophy.
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