TRANSCENDENTALISM NOTES (1800-1850)
LANGUAGE ARTS 11
Transcendentalism IS:
 Included in the Romantic Era of American writing
 A rebirth or Renaissance of intellectual and artistic achievements
 A movement that occurred from 1830-1860 (Civil War) that made a cultural imprint with
American idealism and ethical issues
 Where people looked to the “literary man” for guidance
Transcendentalism began as a reaction to
 Economic prosperity, whereby cities and governments had been established.
 Social problems that needed to be analyzed following that growth: slavery, child labor,
materialism, political corruption, American expansionism
As a result, Transcendentalists, looked at their intellectual and artistic sides to solve these problems.
One way, for example, was the establishment of the LYCEUM MOVEMENT, where meetings dealt with
how to improve education, naming it LYCEUM after the great thinker, Aristotle.
This occurred in the American Northeast, primarily Massachusetts.
The Transcendental Club, full of intelligent individualists, formed around 1836 in Emerson’s house to
seek to try to instruct other in their ideology.
How Transcendental ideas came about:
As a spin off of the Unitarian Universalist church.
Unitarian Universalist tenets:
1. Christ was revered, but not sanctified.
2. People are divine.
3. Gospels are aligned with great thinkers (Socrates, Aristotle, Shakespeare, etc.)
4. People sought to become more spiritual, better read, less materialistic, even
vegetarians, for example.
5. As a reaction to Puritan ideology, there was the desire to create a Utopia and do the
“moral” thing.
6. Focus was on the individual, the ideal, and nature.
Transcendentalism Basic Principles:
1. Definition: Transcend---to rise above, to pass beyond limits.
2. Basic truths of the world lie beyond the knowledge we obtain by our senses.
3. Through intuition, rather, we can “know” the existence of our soul.
4. The human spirit can transcend to a higher, spiritual plane---above the material world, know
fundamental truths about life and death, experience a union with God through an altered state
of consciousness, and can know an ultimate spiritual reality.
5. Intuition allows you to transcend. Emerson says that intuition is the “highest power of the
soul”---a power that “never reasons, never proves (but) simply perceives.”
6. The divine intellect allows man to make good decisions
7. Man can unite with God through nature---In other words, nature is the church.
8. Divine nature---God is in man and in all living things. Therefore, nature is divine.
9. There is the “oversoul” (Emerson’s word for the divine intellect). We all have one, and the
oversoul, when found through divine insight, points the way to perfection and salvation.
10. There is a unity with God, humanity, and nature because we all share a universal soul.
11. We are all open to direct, moral guidance.
12. We are our own church. Therefore, there is no need for structured religion. Emerson says “Let
us demand our own works and laws and worship.”
13. Man’s purpose is to be introspective and get divine guidance in learning to understand the
nature of God and search for divine meaning of oneself and all living things.
14. If we live in harmony with nature, we can transcend.
15. We can find truths in nature, communicate with it, and read it.
16. Nature is the source of goodness and inspiration.
17. Through Nature is God.
18. Nature is symbolic of the spirit because nature shares with humanity the universal soul.
19. Individualism---We can transcend if we are individuals.
20. Like the Puritans, we can experience God firsthand, but unlike the Puritans, there are not an
“elect” few.
21. Each person is inherently good.
22. To be an individual, one must live free of society’s beliefs and habits. Society, after all, is
corrupt because it is uniform, rigid, and materialistic. The Transcendentalists would see the
individual as more important than society.
23. Every human can transcend, is divine, is equal, and capable of knowing God.
24. After one transcends, he or she will do the right thing for him or herself, and ultimately, for
society. Take care of the self, and then the rest will fall into place.
25. Man should live for ideals, not materials.
26. Man should be a nonconformist.
27. Follow one’s instincts.
28. Be an optimist.
29. Literature should be as free from conventions are we should be.
30. Work hard, but do not let your success be determined by material gains.
31. Transcendentalism is NOT a religion, but merely a philosophy of spirituality.
32. Note, because the Transcendentalists wholeheartedly appreciate individual thought over that
of the group, they frequently disagreed with one another.
33. Similar to Aristotle’s dictum---“Know thyself,” Transcendentalists believed that all knowledge
begins with self-knowledge.
34. The life is more important than the afterlife, according to the Transcendentalists, because, as
Emerson says, “the one thing in the world of value is the active soul.”
35. Emphasis should be on the here and now, as Thoreau says: “give me one world at a time.”
36. Evil is an absence of good.
37. Emphasis is on Self-reliance, not Fate or predestination.
Transcendentalists left these legacies:
1. They influenced Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. through the notion of Civil Disobedience.
2. They influenced the beat generation of writers and artists during the 50’s and the “young radicals”
of the 60’s and 70’s, where anti-war, anti-government, and anti-materialism ideologies existed.
3. Meditation and the New Age movement.
4. Modern writers like: Frost and Ginsberg.