Transcript Transcendentalism - Ms. fowler

TUESDAY, 10/14
Please take out your Epigraph
Journals.
Under today’s Epigraph please write
two sentences:
1 that defines American Romanticism
1 that defines American Dark
Romanticism
American Romanticism Review
• The "Romantic Period" refers to literary and cultural movements
in England, Europe, and America roughly from 1770 to 1860. Its
peak was in the 1840s.
• Romantic writers (and artists) saw themselves as revolting against the
"Age of Reason" (1700-1770) and its values (writers like Franklin and
Jefferson, saw God as a “divine watchmaker,” who created the universe
and left it to run itself).
• They celebrated
•
•
•
•
•
•
imagination/intuition versus reason/ calculation,
spontaneity versus control,
subjectivity and metaphysical musing versus objective fact,
revolutionary energy versus tradition,
individualism versus social conformity,
democracy versus monarchy, and so on.
Review:
The 5 “I”s that characterize these -isms
•Imagination
•Intuition
•Idealism
•Inspiration
•Individuality
In your Transcendentalism packet,
answer the following questions:
NATURE & YOU
Nature and You
1. How are you affected by nature? Do you find
comfort in it? Do you reflect the moods of
nature?
2. What is the role of nature in your life?
3. What is meant by an individual’s spiritual side?
How to you define it?
4. Is there a connection between the individual’s
spirit and nature? If so, what is that connection?
5. What does it mean to know something
intuitively? For example, has a parent or a sibling
ever known something was wrong with you
without having talked with or seen you? What do
we mean when we say “I just know it”?
6. How do you demonstrate that you are an
individual? Do you think independently of others
or do you follow the crowd?
TRANSCENDENTALISM
Goodman, Russell, "Transcendentalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr 2011/entries/transcendentalism/>.
“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.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
TranscendenTalism’s Origins
• First arose among liberal New England
Congregationalists, who departed from orthodox Calvinism
in two respects:
• They believed in the importance and efficacy of
human striving, as opposed to the bleaker Puritan
picture of complete and inescapable human damnation
• They emphasized the unity rather than the “Trinity”
of God (hence the term “Unitarian,” originally a term of
abuse that they came to adopt.)
• held that Jesus was in some way inferior to God the Father
but still greater than human beings
Transcendental Beliefs
•Action — along with nature and “the mind of
the Past” is essential to human education
•Men and women are gods “in ruins”
(Emerson from Nature)
•Religion is based not on testimony but on a
“perception” that produces a “religious
sentiment”
•The European Christian establishment is
injurious but Jesus is a “friend of man”
Key Tenets of Transcendentalism
In Nature, we are able to "transcend" the truths we
know in the Natural world. In other words,
Transcendentalists believe in things they cannot
see or touch or feel. Nature is our source to
experience these truths. So things like meditation
can bring us to truths that we never would have
experienced using only our five senses.
Materialism is bad. Striving for material goods was
seen as worthless and an unhealthy pursuit. It was
totally superficial and can only lead to corruption.
Key Tenets of Transcendentalism
Society is the source of corruption. If we are
all to follow our own free will and listen to
our hearts, we would be much better off.
Societal/governmental norms and rules are
counterintuitive.
Our intuition and natural instincts guide us to
do the right things. In nature, we are
uncorrupted. It is only when we let society
in that we start to conform and hence, be
corrupted.
Key Tenets of Transcendentalism
Conformity is wrong. We should NOT follow
the crowd. We should make our own way
and our own decisions in this world in order
to truly embrace our uncorrupted intuition.
The nature of human beings is good. Again, it
is society that corrupts us. Human beings
left to their own devices are good.
Key Tenets of Transcendentalism
Knowledge comes from experience. The
knowledge is not derived from reading books or
studying or any of the other things we do in
schools. It comes from living.
God is everywhere and in everything. The
Transcendentalists did not need organized religion
because they wanted that direct relationship with
God, not one through a pastor or a priest.
All things are interconnected. The LIFEFORCE or
OVERSOUL that exists everywhere also connects
everything
What would the Transcendentalists say?
• “Some people are just bad apples”
• “Go with your gut”
• “Everyone has darkness in them, it comes from the
natural world”
Transcendentalism
•an American literary, political, and
philosophical movement of the early
nineteenth century
•The Transcendentalists can be
understood by what they were
rebelling against, what they saw as
the current situation and therefore as
what they were trying to be different
from.
Transcendentalists
•Ralph Waldo Emerson
•Henry David Thoreau
•Margaret Fuller
•Amos Bronson Alcott
•Frederic Henry Hedge
•Theodore Parker
Transcendentalists
•A generation of well educated people
who lived in the decades before the
American Civil War
•both reflected and exacerbated national
division
Transcendentalists
•Had a sense that a new era was at hand
•Were critics of their society for its
unthinking conformity, and urged that
each person find, in Emerson's words,
“an original relation to the universe.”
Transcendentalists
• Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in
solitude amidst nature, and in their writing.
• By the 1840s they, along with other
transcendentalists, they were engaged in the social
experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and
Walden
• By the 1850s communicated increasingly urgent
critique of American slavery
Emerson from
Nature
“I become a
transparent
eyeball. I am
nothing; I see all;
The currents of the
universal being
circulate through
me.”
Key Players
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Nature, Self Reliance
• transparent eye-ball
• nature as a way to
reach God
Key Players
• Henry David Thoreau
• lived alone in cabin of
Emerson’s on Walden Pond
for 2 years
• Famous for Civil Disobedience
and Walden
Homework: Transcendentalist Jigsaw
Due Thursday
• Read the Transcendentalist excerpt
• Prepare a one-page, typed write up (12 pt. font,
double spaced) that addresses:
Summary of main ideas
Views on humanity?
Find and explain specific examples of
tenants of Transcendentalism