Transcript The Spirit of Individualism

The Spirit of Individualism
American Transcendentalism
 1. Transcendentalism is a form of philosophical
idealism (Platonic). Basically, the means of living your
life according to…
 2. The transcendentalist rises above the lower
animalistic impulses in life, as well as the cultural
restrictions of society, and moves from the rational to a
spiritual realm.
 3. God or the Life Force in the universe can be found
everywhere, thus no need for churches or holy
places.
The Spirit of Individualism
 4. God can be found in both nature and human
nature. God is not super human being but a spirit
in us all.
 5. Every person possesses the "inner light"
of God, which must be nourished to sustain us.
 6. Every person possesses "intuition," an
essentialist understanding of right and
wrong (moral action).
The Spirit of Individualism
 7. Culture and society tend to corrupt our intuition,
establishing other determiners for morality and truth
(church, government, peer groups, etc.) that deny
us our own truths.
 8. Thinking helps us to actualize the authority of our
intuition. Thus, we feel what's right/wrong; then we
know what's right/wrong.
 9. Learning can also aid intuition and connect us to
nature, resulting in the drive for self-culture-learning new ideas and skills.
The Spirit of Individualism
 10. However, the past, in terms of learning and knowledge,
should not limit or define who we are today. The material
world is influx; the spiritual realm (fixed) manifests itself in
different ways over time. Hence, emphasis on the here and
now.
 11. We should live close to nature, for it is our greatest
teacher. Nature is emblematic, and understanding its
"language" can bring us closer to God . Poets know this, and
they write in the language of nature, helping us to connect our
lives to the spiritual realm. They replace the priests and
ministers of the church.
 12. Individualism lies at the heart of
Transcendentalism. Every individual needs to be self-reliant
and thus not depend upon others if he or she is to be free and
to live life fully. Self-empowered is attained by defying the
authority of "empty" conventions and senseless rules.
The Spirit of Individualism
 13. The Bible was written for people in the past and
may offer some transcending lessons. But it is not
the word of God, or the ultimate authority on how to
live your life.
 14. Jesus had God in him too, like all of us, but he
was not God. In many ways, though, he taught
valuable lessons and lived a transcendent life,
which should be studied. The miracles of the Bible
are doubted in terms of uniqueness; the universe
around us everyday is full of the miracles of nature.
 15. Evil (dark) is the absence of good (light), but
good is more powerful. The law of compensation
means that good will always arise from evil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
“Self-Reliance”
 1. "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron
string." Divine Providence runs through each of us,
taking the shape of intuition--the "primary
wisdom." The world has a transcendent destiny, and
we are "noble clay plastic under the Almighty effort."
 2. "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." You are sacred, and so is your
mind. However, society retards your growth, inhibits
you, and prevents you from fulfilling your destiny. If
you live "after the world's opinion," or what people
think, your life will become "an apology." The past is
the past; you're living now in the future--everything is
new and different.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
“Self-Reliance”
 3. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines." Following the rules made by others may
make you safe from the displeasure of others, but it
isn't fulfilling. If you do this, you're NOT living your life
but the life of others. Don't let the hobgoblin of
conformity scare you into compliance. "Always scorn
appearances." Insist on yourself; never imitate."
 4. "Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no
law less than the eternal law." Defy authority,
including governmental and religious, that is not in
accord with your intuition. Wow, a dangerous idea.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
“Self-Reliance”
 5. Self-culture: This is the basic principle for all
the Transcendentalists. It means many things
but foremost, two things: 1. Don't depend on
others. Learn how to do things so that you
aren't owing and in the control of others. 2.
Knowledge of the world around us is the best
means for our understanding ourselves in the
universe--self-aware and self-reliant. Thoreau
will spent 2 years at Walden Pond showing us
self-culture in action.
Emerson's "The Poet"
Basic Principles
 1. The poet is representative man: Composite
of all of a culture's people.
 2. The poet is the interpreter, the sayer, the
namer (Adam), the language maker for a
democratic people (reflects call for a "national"
American literature). Words are actions that
guide us and connect us in life.
 3. Nature is a picture language, symbolic,
emblems. Words are signs of natural facts that
attach us to spiritual world.
Emerson's "The Poet"
Basic Principles
 4. Nature is the healer of our suffering caused by a
divided self--alienated from yourself. The return to
nature is our salvation. Poets put us in contact with the
timeless, eternal truths.
 5. The poet is a liberating god, who replaces ministers
and priests.
 However, Emerson says at the end that he looks "in
vain for the poet whom I describe." Remember these
things when we get to Whitman.
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
"Economy"
Thoreau's intention in writing Walden was to "actualize" some of
the basic principles of Transcendentalism. Two of those principles
are self-culture and self-reliance--concepts related to Emerson
discussed above. Thoreau went to Walden to learn how to live:
 "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.“
 Nature is his schoolhouse for developing and exercising the habits
of self-culture. However, he writes Walden not as a blueprint for
others to follow blindly but as an example of how others may
find their own way. He does not want to make copies of himself
but instead inspire originals. Furthermore, his audience is certainly
not the happy, spiritual fulfilled individual who loves her job and is
living an authentic life. Thoreau is directing his views toward
those "men who live lives of quiet desperation." This is one
reason why his book became so popular in the industrialized age
of the 20th century.
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
 --The Divided Self:
Thoreau recognizes two aspects of human nature in
the search for selfhood: 1. Spiritual (flows from God
through nature) 2. Material: Contact with the self
through worldly interaction (material needs). In his
chapter, "Economy," he tells us that our life is an
economy, measurable in quantity and quality, and
connected to the number of days we live. We "spend"
our life constantly, and the questions are: What's the
return? What do we gain from living? Are we living the
life that we want for ourselves or someone else's
life? Are we living a spiritual existence?
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
--Freedom from materialism:
 Our material needs are many, perhaps too
many. Materialism is a system of controls that rules
our lives. Thoreau divides those needs into four
categories and then tries to show that the demands
made by these needs control us. We must work to
make the money to support this materialism. If we
reduce our dependency on materialism, we gain
freedom to explore who and what we are (self-culture).
That freedom requires only one principle: SIMPLIFY-get rid of the useless baggage that holds us down.
Sure, own things but don't let them own you. In
addition, he tells us to learn to be self-reliant so that we
don't have to owe others for our material existence.
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
--The principle of simplify applied:
 1. Food: Much of Walden concerns growing and eating food--our
first and strongest need. The foodstuff that he raises supports the
"expense" of his whole two-year experiment. It's the basis of his
"economy." He raises much of his own food to support the notion
of self-reliance. His eating is simple (no expensive meat) so that
he need not labor too much or too hard to acquire it.
 2. Shelter: This is our biggest expense--one that puts us in debt
for a generation or two. Why bother with ownership that controls
your life? Instead, he builds a simple 10 by 15 hut to demonstrate
that it keeps him out of the elements--it serves his need for
shelter--and didn't cost much. Others labor most of their lives to
support their "mansion" in Orland Park.
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
 3. Clothing: All you need are two sets of clothing and one pair of
shoes. Clothing serves two purposes: warmth and modesty. The
rest is "changing style," which never ceases to keep you buying
and using that VISA card at Field's (Macy's?). Is that Coach purse
a real need or a fanciful desire to show off?
 4. Fuel: Thoreau relates this to food--the body's fuel. We use it to
keep warm and cook our food. Today, we use it for everything in
the form of electricity. Without it, we'd collapse. Walden Pond had
trees that were plentiful. What would Thoreau say about Peoples'
Gas? What would you do in February in Chicago if the gas was
suddenly turned off? Burn the furniture, Mabel? Solar or thermal
power is self-reliance. The point that Thoreau makes is that these
needs can be reduced in our lives; we can be become less
dependent on the sources that satisfy these needs. We can
simplify our lives, and we can also learn how to do things
ourselves in order cut down the expense that they demand from
our living economy.
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
--The principle of a creating God and man in Nature:
 Thoreau tells us that "God himself culminates in the
present moment, and will never be more divine in the
lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend
at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual
instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds
us." In other words, God is not at the ends of time-Alpha/Omega or creation/judgment--but right here and
now. He is all about us and in us too, doing what he
has always done-CREATING. Thoreau is reflecting on
Emerson's concept of nature "in the common sense,"
as 1. Nature, that which is unchanged by man, God's
creating; 2. Art, human creation that changes what God
created into new things. Since we are god-like,
created in his image, we carry on his work on earth.
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
Thus,
1. God creates in the macro-cosmos (the stars,
the rivers, the leaves on the tree, etc.)
2. Man creates in the micro-cosmos (the houses,
the tools, the babies, the medicines to cure,
etc.) We are co-creators of the world.
Okay? What happens when we humans cocreate something that ain't so nice?
Henry David Thoreau:
Walden
--Thoreau: "I was determined to know beans."
 In order to demonstrate self-reliance and self-culture,
Thoreau supported his enterprise at Walden by raising
beans. Some he ate; some he sold to support
himself. He spent time cultivating his beans through
his labor, but Thoreau wants us to see that through his
"work" he was actually growing closer to nature. Since
God is immanent (in all things in nature), raising beans
was a way of coming to know how the spiritual realm
operates in the material--a form of active worship. In a
real sense, this is a model for all authentic work in life-work that connects you to the world both spiritually and
materially (eating).
The Railroad
 For the Transcendentalists (and others), the
railroad came to symbolize industrialization
and subsequently the loss of spiritual
connection and control in life. The railroad was
the ultimate machine; not restricted to urban
centers of commerce and manufacturing, it
invaded the "garden"--seemingly destroying
the tranquility and peace of mind needed to
live an authentic life. People came to be
regulated by "railroad time," and the loudness
and pollution it created seemed inescapable.
The Railroad
 Walden Pond was bordered on the south by
the newly constructed Fitchburg spur that
connected Concord to Boston; it ran a
hundred rods away from Thoreau's hut in the
woods. Throughout Walden, Thoreau refers to
the railroad in ways that display his dislike for
it. He tells us: "We do not ride on the railroad;
it rides on us." In "Sounds," he describes the
whistle that screams and the clouds of smoke
that looks like a comet. "We have constructed
a fate, an Ahropos [Greek fate that cuts the
thread of human life], that never turns aside,"
he adds, "But the bell rings, and I must get off
the track and let the cars go by."
The Railroad
 Thoreau was aware that technological progress was not going to
be stopped: He gets off the track. However, given his belief that in
the principle of co-creation (God creates in the macro-cosmos/
man in the micro-cosmos), he had to resolve his hatred toward
this human creation. He does this in a mystical way in "Spring,"
as he watches "the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in
flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad." This scene
represents the rebirth of life in spring, but it also assumes the
contours of creation itself as he stands "in the laboratory of the
Artist [God] who made the world and me." The railroad
embankment offers a place for the potential for continued creation;
its potential for good cannot be read at this point for Thoreau. It
may look "excrementitious in its character" now, but it is still a part
of the creative process of the universe in which "There is nothing
inorganic." Good may yet come from the railroad. Perhaps. He
offers us a curious open-ended resolution to the conflict in thought
that the railroad evokes in him.
Emerson's Two Parties,
plus one
 In summing up his age, Emerson said that his fellow
humans fell into two categories or parties when it came
to be influenced by history:
--The Party of Hope: Mainly the Transcendentalists
who believed in the present and looked to the
future. Humans were innocent by nature; human
nature was essentially "good." Adam's sin was
forgotten; the human potential was boundless. Selfimprovement and self-culture would create even
greater growth. NATURE was spiritual salvation.
Emerson's Two Parties,
plus one
 --The Party of Memory: Mainly those
who recalled the sinful past of
humans. Humans were depraved by
nature; human nature would turn to evil if
not controlled. Adam's sin was still on us;
the human potential was limited by the
past of sinfulness. God was the only
source of spiritual salvation.
Emerson's Two Parties,
plus one
 The critic, RWB Lewis added a third party to Emerson's
division
--The Party of Irony: Mainly those who held "a tragic
optimism" about the future and a sense of the tragic
collision to which innocence was liable. They
recognized the value of hope but believed that memory
would overcome the growth of human potential. They
understood the freedom offered by "nature" but they
also saw nature as cruel and indifferent to human
suffering--alien often. The memory of the past would
not be overcome by hope alone. They were the
believers who doubted their own beliefs, who were
always uncertain about what truth was; they were
Hawthorne and Melville.
Credits
 Notes taken from:
Dr. Augustus Kolich,
English Professor, Saint Xavier
University
Activity: You don’t always get what you want, but if
you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you
need…(150 words min.)
• Make a list of ten things (or less, or more)
that you absolutely need to survive today.
After making your list, explain the
reasons why you need those items in a
well-developed journal entry. Do you
really “need” those items? What purpose
do they serve? Could you do without
some of them? Explain your choices.