Transcend: [verb] to go beyond the limits
of; exceed; be above and independent of
the physical universe
What Was Transcendentalism?
Transcendentalism was a nineteenth-century
philosophical movement. Transcendentalists
believed that true reality transcends, or exists
beyond, the physical world.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger
than any material force; that thoughts rule the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We will walk on our
own feet; we will work
with our own hands; we
will speak our own
minds...A nation of men
will for the first time
exist, because each
believes himself
inspired by the Divine
Soul which also inspires
all men."
The Transcendentalists
 American Transcendentalism began with
the formation in 1836 of the
Transcendental Club in Boston
 Magazine: The Dial
 Brook Farm: communal living experiment
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Margaret Fuller
Henry David Thoreau
Bronson Alcott
Romanticism
Nature
Emotion
Individual
Supernatural
Subjectivity
Atmosphere
Transcendentalism
Gothic
Basic Beliefs of Transcendentalism
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Everything in the world, including people, is a
reflection of God, or the Divine Soul.
The physical world is a doorway to the spiritual
world.
People can use intuition to see God in nature and
in their own souls.
A person—not society, the church, or
government—is his or her own best authority.
Feeling and intuition are superior to reason and
intellect.
Born Bad or Good?
Puritans
Sinful
Enlightenment
Blank Slate
Transcendentalists
Good
Nature & the Oversoul
 Transcendentalist
writers expressed semi-religious
feelings toward nature
 They saw a direct connection between the
universe & the individual soul
 Divinity permeated all objects, animate or
inanimate
 The purpose of human life was union with the
“Oversoul” – a sort of convergence of the
individual, God & Nature
The Oversoul
“The groves were God’s first temples”
– Willam Cullen Bryant
Individual
God Nature
“In the faces of men and women I see God.”
– Walt Whitman
Major Transcendentalist Works
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
“Self-Reliance” 1841
Henry David Thoreau
Walden 1854
“Civil Disobedience”
Anti-Transcendentalists
Nathanial
Hawthorne and
Herman Melville
Both explore the darker side of
nature and human nature
Both consider life in its tragic
dimension, a combination of
good and evil
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalists
believed that
humanity was Godlike and saw
the world in which only good
existed
They chose to focus on the
positive rather than evil &
darkness
The Roots of Transcendentalism
A
B CD
2000
1900
1800
1700
1600
0
400 B.C.
A. Idealism (Greece, 4th century B.C.)
B. Puritanism (North America, 17th century)
C. Romanticism (Europe and North America, late 18th century
through mid-19th century)
D. Transcendentalism (North America, 19th century)
Idealism
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Idealism was a philosophy explained by the Greek philosopher Plato
in the 4th century B.C. Idealists believed that true reality could be
found in ideas rather than in the physical world.
Idealism and
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed that
Transcendentalism was simply Idealism rediscovered and applied to
the nineteenth-century world.
•Transcendentalists shared Plato’s belief in an all-encompassing
spiritual reality.
•They applied Idealist ideas to human life, believing in human
perfectibility and working to achieve that goal.
Puritanism
Puritanism was an early American religious philosophy. The Puritans
believed that
•religion is a personal, inner experience that should not be filtered
through clergy or government
•people should be self-reliant
•God’s presence reveals itself primarily through the Bible, but also
through signs in the physical world
•human salvation is reserved for a few “elect” people—the majority
of humanity is destined to damnation
Puritanism and Transcendentalism
•Transcendentalists shared the Puritan beliefs in the personal nature
of religion and the desirability of self-reliance.
•However, Transcendentalists differed because they
•looked to nature, not the Bible, as a primary source
of divine revelation
•believed that all humans, not just the “elect,” were
connected to a divine source
Romanticism
Romanticism was a school of thought that began in late eighteenthcentury Europe and spread to America in the nineteenth century.
The Romantics
•valued imagination, feeling,
and nature over reason,
logic, and civilization
•championed individualism
© Francis G. Mayer/Corbis
•reflected on nature to gain
spiritual wisdom
Romanticism and
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism was one of the faces of American Romanticism.
•Transcendentalists took the Romantic belief that spiritual wisdom
could be found in nature one step further—they believed that
everything in the physical world, including human beings, is a
reflection of God.
•The Transcendentalists believed that because human beings are a
part of the Divine Soul, they are capable of perfection.
Belief in Action
Because Transcendentalists believed in the
possibility of human perfection, they
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pursued practical goals for improving people’s lives
developed plans for creating a perfect, or utopian,
society
worked for social change
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson was the best-known Transcendentalist. He
•was a highly influential writer, lecturer,
and social reformer
•lectured and wrote extensively on
Transcendental ideas
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•was admired by and influenced other
writers and artists, including Henry
David Thoreau and Walt Whitman
The Transparent
Eyeball could
simultaneously
absorb and observe
information while
being part of that
information was a
symbolic
representation of
these ideas.
Literary:
•Transcendentalists. Like their fictional
counterparts, the Romantics, were
trying to forge a distinctly American
literature and philosophy that valued
the power of the individual.
The End