Unveiling Transcendentalism: Idealism and Spiritual Unity

1. TranscendentalIsm

2. Transcendentalist Thought • Transcendentalism is based on the philosophy of idealism, which dates back to ancient Greece • Transcendentalism is based upon the ideas of American thinkers ranging from the Puritans to the nineteenth century romantics. • It is neither a religion, nor a philosophy, nor a literary theory, but it has elements of all three.

3. Exploring Transcendentalism • Transcendentalism is the view that basic truths of the universe lie beyond the knowledge we obtain from our senses. • The transcendentalists believed that there is a realm of knowledge that transcends what we can obtain through our senses.

4. View of the World • It is through intuition that we “know” the existence of our own soul and its relationship to a reality beyond the physical world. • Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the divine soul. • The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world. • Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition.

5. View of the World cont. • Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationalism. • The human soul is a part of the Oversoul or universal spirit to which it and all other souls return at death.

6. Spiritual Connotations • God is in every aspect of nature, including human beings. • Thus, every individual is to be respected because all are a part of the Oversoul. • Nature is a reflection of the divine spirit. • There is a spiritual unity of all forms of being, with God, humanity, and nature sharing a universal soul.

7. The Transcendentalists • Ralph Waldo Emerson: Wrote Nature; a work that explored transcendental thought in great detail. Emerson also wrote a collection of poems

8. The Transcendentalists • Henry David Thoreau: Read Emerson while attending Harvard and was inspired to write his own collections of transcendental thought which he entitled Walden.

9. Spirit and Nature • Transcendentalists believe that since nature shares the universal soul that permeates all beings—with all humanity—no part of the natural world can be trivial or insignificant because all is symbiotic. • Seen in this light, nature demands a new reverence from the writer and a deeper attention to all of its details.

10. Characteristics of Transcendental Writing • Transcendentalist writers elaborately interwove natural, human, and spiritual meaning into their work. • Transcendentalist writers delved deep into the mysteries of the human personality, especially irrational elements. • In their recognition of individual insight as a source of intellectual and spiritual richness, transcendentalist writers opened the way for American literature to a complex human psychology.

11. Transcendentalism - Manifest Destiny • Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature (excerpt) pg 205 • Self-Reliance (excerpt) pg 208 • The American Scholar internet • Henry David Thoreau – Walden (excerpt) pg 215 • Resistance to Civil Government(excerpt) pg234 • Emily Dickinson - Selected Poems see handout • Walt Whitman –Selected Poems see handout

17. Sources: http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/TABLE.HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/amlitweb.htm http://www.transcendentalists.com/ Slideshow developed by Adam Stephens, edited by Matthew Logsdon