The Transcendentalists

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The Transcendentalists

• The Transcendentalists were a group of American
  writers and thinkers who lived in New England,
  mostly around Boston, in the 1800s--decades
  before the Civil War. They were an outgrowth of
  the Romantic Movement.

Thoreau
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Emerson
Thoreau
Margaret Fuller
Leading Transcendentalists
Bronson Alcott
Theodore Parker
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Meaning of Their Name

• Trans the prefix means over
• Scend from the Latin scandere
• this means to climb

• The word transcend means to climb over or go
  beyond.

Transcendentalists wanted to go beyond what could
be learned by reason and everyday experience.
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The Transcendentalists

• They wanted to discover higher truths and
  insights about life by using their intuition.
  They urged people to have faith in their own
  inner light.
• They spread their ideas in a magazine they
  established in 1840, The Dial, which was edited
  by Margaret Fuller.

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The Transcendentalists

• In the words of 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."

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Transcendentalists believed

• Each person should live close to nature.

• There is dignity in manual labor.

• Man needs intellectual companionship and
  interests.

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Transcendentalists felt spiritual living was very
important.

• A persons relationship to God was very
  important,
• BUT it was established by the person
  himself/herself and NOT by following the dictates
  of any church.
• There was a strong belief in brotherhood and
  equality.

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The Transcendentalists

• told everyone
• Trust yourselfthe voice inside your head is
  really the voice of God speaking intuitively
  inside you.

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The Transcendentalists

• Were reformers.
• Were individualists.
• Were strongly anti-slavery.
• Were for womens rights and suffrage.

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Emerson said

• it was mans responsibility to be a brave and
  upright man, who must find or cut a straight path
  to everything
• excellent in the earth,
• and not only go honorably
• himself, but make it easier
• for all who follow him to go
• in honor and with benefit.

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Self Reliance

• was a major philosophy of Transcendentalism.
• Emerson wrote about this in his essays and
  influenced Thoreau to try out his ideas by living
  alone at Walden Pond for two years.
• Thoreaus book Walden about his experience is a
  classic of American literature.

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The Transcendentalists

• Also tested the ideas of equality and self
  reliance when they supported Brook Farm, an
  experiment in communal living, from 1841-1847.
• Few actually lived there, but most visited there.
  
• It was supposed to be a true utopia where
  everyone would be free and equal.
• It had an excellent school, but the farm was not
  a financial success.
• A disastrous fire that burned a main building
  ended the experiment.

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The Transcendentalists

• left their mark on American life with their
  writings and their thoughts.
• They were a powerful force in the struggle for
  human rights, especially for African-Americans
  and women.
• They respected nature and were the first
  environmentalists.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Trust thyself every heart vibrates to that
  iron string.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

• For non-conformity, the world whips you with its
  displeasure.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Is it so bad then to be misunderstood?
  Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and
  Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo,
  and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that
  ever took flesh. To be great is to be
  misunderstood.

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Henry David Thoreau

• If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
  perhaps it is because he hears a different
  drummer. Let him step to the music which he
  hears, however measured or far away.

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Henry David Thoreau

• I went to the woods because I wished to live
  deliberately, to front only the essential facts
  of life, and see if I could not learn what it had
  to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
  that I had not lived.