American Transcendentalism1830-1860

Backgrounds for Walden

Origins: Romanticism

• European Movement

• Emotion is central, “Beyond the rational.”

• Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth some of the major writers associated with the movement.

• Heavily influenced by the French Revolution (1789).

• Influenced by the Industrial Revolution

• At this time, America heavily influenced by Europe in the arts.

Influences: German Transcendentalism

• Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason): called “all knowledge transcendental which is concerned not with object, but with our mode of knowing them.”

• Kant believed that the world appears in the form it does to us and is apprehended by the structure of the mind. That is, certain categories exist in the mind before consciousness.

• The American Transcendentalists were not familiar with their German precursors first-hand.

• We have a blend of the Romantics and the German Transcendentalists in the American manifestation of it.

Reactions Against…

• Lockean Theory: Philosophically, the transcendentalists rejected the empiricist view of the world. That is, we begin with a tabula rasa (clean slate of a mind), and the only way that we can create impressions on the mind if through perception or the senses.

• Berkeley: “If a tree falls in the woods…”• Sensualism as the only way to create

experience or “know a thing.”

And Reactions Against…

• The Unitarian Church. Accepted the Lockean idea, teaching that God and His laws are apprehended through rational reflection on natural creation and the revelations of scripture.

• For young radical Unitarians, this doctrine seemed inadequate because it cut people off from God.

• Emerson and Thoreau were chief figures in the movement.

Resulting Theory!• The Transcendentalists developed a conceptual

distinction between understanding and reason. Reason, for them, is a higher mental faculty that allows one to perceive spiritual truth intuitively.

• Some called it spirit, mind, or soul.• The movement also stressed a certain liberalism

(individualism), a separation from societal law or concept of political community.

• Rejection of pure rationalism for intuition and feeling (notice the fusion of Romantic and Transcendental terms).

TranscendentalismIn Sum

1. General Principles• Humans can transcend to a

higher spiritual place.• This takes place through

intuition, not reason.• This takes place through or in

nature, not society.• That which is required to know

things is inside each of us. Therefore, the past, family, or society aren’t required.

• Habit and tradition impede insight.

• American Literature doesn’t need the forms and traditions of Europe. This concept was reiterated through Whitman and others.

2. Chief Works• Emerson, “Nature” (1836)• Thoreau, Walden (1854).