Transcendentalism
- Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Philosophical Romanticism
- A reliance on intuition and conscience
- Transcendentalism, though based on doctrines of ancient and modern European
philosophers, took on special significance in the United States.
- The group seemed in general harmony in their conviction that within the nature of human
beings there was something which transcended human experience - an intuitive and personal
revelation.
- They believed in living close to nature and taught the dignity of manual labor. They
strongly believed the need of intellectual companionships and interests, and placed great
emphasis on spiritual living. Every person’s relationship to God was a personal
matter and was to be established directly by the individual.
- They held firmly that human beings were divine in their own right. Opposed to the
Puritan doctrines of grace
- Self-trust and self-reliance were to be practiced at all times and on all occasions.
- Believed firmly in democracy, and insisted on intense individualism
- Early advocates for the enfranchisement of women
- Went so far, as to evolve a system of dietetics and to rule out coffee, wine and
tobacco.
- Most of the transcendentalists were by nature reformers
- In this way, most of the reforms were attempts to awaken and regenerate the human
spirit.
- It was the belief that human beings can intuitively transcend the limits of the senses
and of logic and receive directly higher truths and greater knowledge denied to other
mundane methods of knowing.
- Thoreau and Emerson were the fathers of transcendentalist philosophy but the movement
spawned many others and Hawthorn was a part of the movement when they founded a commune
called Brooks farm