One afternoon in 1836 the Transcendental Club held its first meeting in Boston. The membership was noteworthy not only for the list of impressive personages, headed by Emerson, but for the general youthfulness of the group (Thoreau was only twenty-two) and for the fact (unusual for the day) that several women were invited to attend. The club consisted mainly of "bright young Unitarians seeking to find meaning, pattern, and purpose in a universe no longer managed by a genteel and amiable (...) Unitarian God." The club met irregularly for three years and then passed into oblivion. The intellectual activity it engendered continues to affect American thought and values even today. The transcendentalists concerned themselves with problems of law, truth, individuality, theology, mysticism, pantheism, and personality, to mention only a few. Moreover, they were prolific writers and produced reams of letters, essays, poems, sketches, and memoirs. Historian Paul Boller traces the movement from its earliest stirrings through its height as a powerful movement to its decline in the aftermath of the Civil War. Whenever possible, he lets the transcendentalists speak for themselves. He sorts the permanent from the transient and demonstrates the immeasurable importance of a body of ideas which still live a century and a half after their inception.--From publisher description. (shrink)

American transcendentalism is essentially a kind of practice by which the world of facts and the categories of common sense are temporarily exchanged for the world of ideas and the categories of imagination. The point of this exchange is to make life better by lifting us above the conflicts and struggles that weigh on our souls. As these chains fall away, our souls rise to heightened experiences of freedom and union with the good. Emerson and Thoreau are the (...) two most significant nineteenth century proponents of American transcendentalism. (shrink)

The first major study since the 1930s of the relationship between American Transcendentalism and Asian religions, and the first comprehensive work to include post-Civil War Transcendentalists like Samuel Johnson, this book is encyclopedic in scope. Beginning with the inception of Transcendentalist Orientalism in Europe, Versluis covers the entire history of American Transcendentalism into the twentieth century, and the profound influence of Orientalism on the movement--including its analogues and influences in world religious dialogue. He examines what he (...) calls "positive Orientalism," which recognizes the value and perennial truths in Asian religions and cultures, not only in the writings of major figures like Thoreau and Emerson, but also in contemporary popular magazines. Versluis's exploration of the impact of Transcendentalism on the twentieth-century study of comparative religions has ramifications for the study of religious history, comparative religion, literature, politics, history, and art history. (shrink)

American Transcendentalism is a sweeping narrative history of America's first group of public intellectuals, the men and women who defined American literature and indelibly marked American reform in the decades before and following the American Civil War. Philip F. Gura masterfully traces their intellectual genealogy to transatlantic religious and philosophical ideas, illustrating how these informed the fierce theological debates that, so often first in Massachusetts and eventually throughout America, gave rise to practical, personal, and quixotic (...) attempts to improve, even perfect the world. The transcendentalists would painfully bifurcate over what could be attained and how, one half epitomized by Ralph Waldo Emerson and stressing self-reliant individualism, the other by Orestes Brownson, George Ripley, and Theodore Parker, emphasizing commitment to the larger social good. By the 1850s, transcendentalists turned ever more exclusively to abolition, and by war's end transcendentalism had become identified exclusively with Emersonian self-reliance, congruent with the national ethos of political liberalism and market capitalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT American Transcendentalism, as a nineteenth-century intellectual and social movement, can inform both the academic debate surrounding post-liberalism and the social, political, and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global capitalism, and globalization more generally, defined the era subsequent to World War II until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The manifestation of global capitalism/globalization took place as a function of the rejection, whether conscious or unconscious, of the values embodied in American Transcendentalism as a modern (...) reincarnation of immaterial and idealist Platonism. For example, American Transcendentalism valued renunciation, nature, and spirituality as the means for attaining an ideal personal life while also providing the building blocks for the attainment of a higher form of government and politics at the collective level. As a climactic global modern development, the COVID-19 pandemic provides empirical evidence for the diminishing returns that are inherent to the hegemonic commitment to materialist economy at the expense of corresponding devaluation of commitments to the ideals of transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson forecast the realization of such diminishing returns, in which he asserted the longevity of the impact of transcendentalism would be greater than that of the materialism in his era. Immediately prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, American youth as a generation exhibited “transcendentalist” attributes such as decreasing commitments to religious and partisan affiliations and a trajectory of disillusionment with political participation. American Transcendentalism can be considered and applied as a source of inspiration to inform nascent deliberations on post-liberalism that invoke Platonism and the “transcendental.” In the context of the confluence of demographic changes, calls for post-liberalism, and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, transcendentalism and its prospective popular reincarnation in the twenty-first century can be applied to generate a new and heretofore hidden transcendental “end of history” narrative as an alternative to the bipolarity of the “end of history” debate. (shrink)

This is Jeffrey R. Di Leo's review of Arthur Verslius's 1993 book, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religion.

This book is a standard anthology of writings of the 19th-century New England transcendentalists.

The Western messanger and The Dial -- Orestes A. Brownson and The Boston quarterly review -- The Present -- The Harbinger -- The Spirit of the age -- Elizabeth Peabody and her Xsthetic papers -- The Massachusetts quarterly review -- The Dial (Cincinnati)--The Radical -- The Index -- Appendix: Two uncollected Emerson items.

Study, with reference to New England, 1830-1860.

This book provides an approach to Emerson that walks the line between traditional and revisionist interpretations of his life and works. The author presents Emerson as a man of faith whose unique synthesis of Kantian and Vedantic philosophies resulted in a view of faith that was one hundred years ahead of its time.

This is an exploration of the political thought of the American transcendentalists focusing on Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. They were writing at a time when the American state was thought of as sacred, the two cities of Augustine, the City of God and the City of Man, combined as one. Indeed the Augustinian metaphor was a powerful one, frequently invoked in this period. American republican democracy in the City of Man enabled citizens through their participation in the (...) state to achieve something close to the spiritual status of the City of God. The transcendentalists, with their emphasis on the importance of individual freedom, did not accept this analysis, according to Daniel Malachuk. They looked at American democracy and saw much that did not support individual pursuit of goodness nor a society that approached the status of the City of God. For example, the continued existence of slavery hardly fit with a godly place. Malachuk argues that the separation between the City of God and the City of Man remains important to transcendentalists who thought that individuals needed to be given space by the state to pursue their individual development. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. This article reveals the understanding of the concept of nature in the works of the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Henry David Thoreau is an American philosopher, poet, essayist, naturalist and political activist. Together with Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend and mentor, he is considered one of the founders of the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism was a powerful movement of American philosophy of the 19th century. It was (...) characterized by focusing on the problem of human self-knowledge, human's returning to own essence, living in harmony with nature, as well as criticism of modern society and active abolitionism. M e t h o d s. The article uses both general scientific methods and special methods, such as – the method of historical-philosophical reconstruction, which made it possible to reproduce the ideas of the American thinker, the hermeneutic method – for explaining individual positions of the philosopher. In addition, literary-critical methods were used, for the possibility of using various primary sources, and systematic method – to identify a systematized structure in the philosophical work of H. D. Thoreau. R e s u l t s. One of the main features of transcendentalism is a special interest in reflection on nature and a special approach to it. Thus, the concept of nature is present in most of H. D. Thoreau's works, and it is the central topic of his philosophical searches. The concept of nature in his works appears in different contexts, acquires different meanings. Thus, H. D. Thoreau talks about nature in the context of nature, in the context of poetic creativity, in his philosophical searches, in his vision of man and in his argumentation of his own political position. However, the different meanings that H. D. Thoreau attaches to the concept of nature do not contradict each other, but, on the contrary, complement and clarify his understanding of nature. C o n c l u s i o n s. This article proposes to consider the use of the concept of nature by H. D. Thoreau in the following aspects: Nature and Peculiarities of nature as a subject of scientific knowledge. Nature and The relationship between nature and culture through the relationship between "the wild" and society. Nature and From naturalism to humanism. Nature as an inner essence of man and solitude with nature as a return to this essence. (shrink)

The article contains a comparative analysis of philosophical and religious views of the Indian thinker and public figure Swami Vivekananda and the philosophers of the American transcenden­talism movement. The author focuses on understanding by the intellectuals of various aspects of the Divine. As representatives of American transcendentalism, the most prominent figures of this movement are considered, in whose works the main transcendentalism ideas are expressed – philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and William Ellery Channing. (...) Hermeneutical and historical-philosophical methods are used in the study. As a result, the obvious similarity of many positions in the teachings of thinkers is recognized, caused by common sources of their views. At the same time, significant differences in the views of Western philosophers and Indian thinker are revealed. They are represented in the ideas about the divinity of man, about na­ture as a metaphysical force, as well as in the question of the search for and knowledge of God. The conclusion about Vivekananda’s adequate comprehension of the works of American trans­cendentalists and his using of transcendentalism ideas for forming a masterful interpretation of the foundations of Indian culture for Western society is done. (shrink)

This book proposes an original philosophy of nature, contributes to our understanding of two of America’s greatest philosophers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles S. Peirce, and examines the philosophical expressions of the art of nineteenth-century American landscape painting.

My thesis is that there is an aesthetic dimension of nature that is metaphysically significant, qualitatively pluralistic, and artistically creative, and that this accounts for the sensuous complexity of experience, as well as the possibility of discovering new qualitative features about the world and expressing them in novel forms, as exemplified in art. I call the philosophy that endorses the reality of this dimension Transcendentalist Aesthetics. The term "Transcendentalist" recalls the philosophy of New England Transcendentalism with its core in (...) Ralph Waldo Emerson, and which influenced the philosophical writings of Charles S. Peirce and the art of the nineteenth-century American landscape painters of the Hudson River School and Luminism. The primary overall goal is to present and argue for a Transcendentalist Aesthetics by making use of the philosophy of Emerson and Peirce, together with the writings and landscapes of the painters. More specifically, Emerson's claims about nature and art and the painters' representations of nature provide various poetic observations of nature that provide an empirical starting point concerning the rich aesthetic complexity of the world. This complexity finds a theoretical ground in Peirce's metaphysical cosmology, which presents a rationally coherent account of the greater structures and processes of the universe while possessing important aesthetic consequences for lived experience and art. The landscape paintings also have a role in that they are expressive of the Transcendentalist philosophy itself, serve as case studies for theoretical interpretation, and are concrete evidence that new qualitative features about the world may be discovered and realized in novel artistic ways. (shrink)

As environmental concerns rightly take a greater role in the critical reevaluation of the American philosophical tradition, it behooves us to return again to the often slippery notion of “nature” to ask if it can be redeemed as not merely the canvas on which human endeavor is depicted but an active element of the diverse and distinct philosophical perspectives that make the tradition. Indeed, there is a great need to depict the potentially subversive ways that human and nature can (...) be understood as radically connatural, in intimate ecological and constructive relations that make nature not just the instrument for the exertion for human wants and desires but also thoroughly and... (shrink)

A dramatic retelling of the story of the Transcendentalists, revealing them not as isolated authors but as a community of social activists who shaped progressive American values. Conflagration illuminates the connections between key members of the Transcendentalist circle—including James Freeman Clarke, Elizabeth Peabody, Caroline Healey Dall, Elizabeth Stanton, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller—who created a community dedicated to radical social activism. These authors and activists laid the groundwork for democratic and progressive religion in America. In the (...) tumultuous decades before and immediately after the Civil War, the Transcendentalists changed nineteenth-century America, leading what Theodore Parker called “a Second American Revolution.” They instigated lasting change in American society, not only through their literary achievements but also through their activism: transcendentalists fought for the abolition of slavery, democratically governed churches, equal rights for women, and against the dehumanizing effects of brutal economic competition and growing social inequality. The Transcendentalists’ passion for social equality stemmed from their belief in spiritual friendship—transcending differences in social situation, gender, class, theology, and race. Together, their fight for justice changed the American sociopolitical landscape. They understood that none of us can ever fulfill our own moral and spiritual potential unless we care about the full spiritual and moral flourishing of others. (shrink)

Describes the life and accomplishments of the nineteenth-century author best known for his work "Walden" and his dedication to expanding the philosophy of ...

Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity, (...) and urged that each individual find, in Emerson's words, “an original relation to the universe”. Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature, and in their writing. By the 1840s they, along with other transcendentalists, were engaged in the social experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden; and, by the 1850's in an increasingly urgent critique of American slavery. (shrink)

walt whitman writes: “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature”. Naoko Saito is an American philosopher and something of a Whitmanesque philosophical poet. Saito’s book is “the product of many years spent reading and studying American philosophy”. She further indicates: “Mostly I have done this from a remote part of the world—far from America across the Pacific Ocean—and, like so many others, in a language that is not my (...) own”. Saito is a scholar in and of translation.Saito states that the “tensioned relationship between Dewey and Emerson, and more broadly pragmatism and American transcendentalism... is carried forward into the present... (shrink)

American literary historians have viewed Ralph Waldo Emerson’s resignation from the Unitarian ministry in 1832 in favor of a literary career as emblematic of a main current in American literature. That current is directed toward the possession of a self that is independent and fundamentally opposed to the “accoutrements of society and civilization” and expresses a Transcendentalist antipathy toward all institutionalized forms of religious observance. In the ongoing revision of American literary history, this traditional reading of the (...) supposed anti-institutionalism of the Transcendentalists has been duly detailed and continually supported. Richard A. Grusin challenges both traditional and revisionist interpretations with detailed contextual studies of the hermeneutics of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Theodore Parker. Informed by the past two decades of critical theory, Grusin examines the influence of the higher criticism of the Bible—which focuses on authorship, date, place of origin, circumstances of composition, and the historical credibility of biblical writings—on these writers. The author argues that the Transcendentalist appeal to the authority of the “self” is not an appeal to a source of authority independent of institutions, but to an authority fundamentally innate. (shrink)

In this essay, the reminiscences of Margaret Fuller, feminist activist and member of the American Transcendentalist movement, from her journey to the Great Lakes region, entitled Summer on the Lakes, are considered in the light of EcoGothic considerations. The essay shows how Fuller’s journey disillusioned her about progress and led to abandoning the serene vision of nature and landscapes reflected in the works of Transcendentalists. The destruction of nature and landscape verging on an ecological catastrophe is presented by Fuller (...) in the perspective of the Gothic, as a price for the technological development driven by the capitalist economy. The Gothic character of Summer on the Lakes derives from the mental condition of the writer and a pessimistic vision arising from the debunking of the myth of America as a virgin land. Fuller’s work constitutes an EcoGothic tribute to the indigenous inhabitants of America—but also a Gothic live burial of the Native Americans who do still live in the regions she visits—as well as to Mariana and Frederica, unusual and gothicized women excluded from society. By bringing together Fuller’s observations about nature, indigenous peoples and marginalized women, the essay shows how Fuller’s text prophetically announces the beginning of the end of the American environment. (shrink)

The book addresses influences and affinities in the context of the history of ideas, literary theory and criticism. It brings together American Transcendentalism, Negritude, African religions and philosophy.

A discussion of the various European sources of New England Transcendentalism.

The relation between Pragmatism, Transcendentalism, and Perfectionism is both obvious and difficult, and this is what prompted us to edit the present issue of the Journal. The relation is obvious, because the history of American Philosophy is deeply textured by this relation, and the transition from Transcendentalism to Pragmatism has been historically attested. Difficult, because these traditions seem to deny one another. Pragmatist philosophers have often presented themselves as the founder...

The transcendentalist movement is generally recognized to be the first major watershed in American literary and intellectual history. Pioneered by Emerson, Thoreau, Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott, Transcendentalism provided a springboard for the first distinctly American forays into intellectual culture: religion and religious reform, philosophy, literature, ecology, and spiritualism. This new collection, edited by eminent American literature scholar Joel Myerson, is the first anthology of the period to appear in over fifty years. Transcendentalism: (...) A Reader draws together in their entirety the essential writings of the Transcendentalist group during its most active period, 1836-1844. It includes the major publications of the Dial, the writings on democratic and social reform, the early poetry, nature writings, and all of Emerson's major essays, as well as an informative introduction and annotations by Myerson. (shrink)

This essay aims to identify a semiotic consciousness found in New England Transcendentalism, consisting of the worldview that signs are pervasively present throughout nature and society. It finds that this worldview exists as a historical strand of thought stretching through the 19th century and, ultimately, further beyond, thereby making up an early movement in American semiotics. In this context, I furthermore see Transcendentalist thought informing the backdrop of Charles Peirce’s groundbreaking theory of signs later in the century, especially (...) his metaphysical claims about a “universe... perfused with signs”1 (1906: EP 2.394). In order to bring into full view the presence of a semiotic consciousness in Transcendentalism, I first address the intellectual history and genealogical roots that helped shape the minds of the Transcendentalists. Relevant influences include those both local to New England and imported from abroad, in particular the theologies of Jonathan Edwards and of Emanuel Swedenborg. Next, I directly examine the ideas of the figurehead of the Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, together with his Concord peers, Amos Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. Taking them as my case studies, I track the different ways a like-minded interest in signs takes shape within their individual projects. Focus-ing on their descriptions of nature, we find it in their experiences of the natural environment, their understanding of phenomena as representational and poetic, and their belief in the dialogical sharing of ideas across minds and species. Along the way, I further work out some of the aspects of a general theory of signs identifi-able within the Transcendentalist perspective, as well as distinguish it from other theoretical alternatives. Ultimately, I contend that the Transcendentalists held a similar idea of nature existing as a sign representing deep and varied meanings. (shrink)

Using Peter Wirzbicki's Fighting for the Higher Law as its analytic starting, this review essay considers the place of antislavery in the developments of American philosophy. Wirzbicki considers the role of African American Transcendentalists and their appeal to a “higher law,” a concept articulated significantly by a diverse group of thinkers associated with Transcendentalism. By 1850, such thinkers appropriated aspects of British and continental idealism, especially the relationship between “understanding” and “Reason,” to aggressively attack human chattel bondage. (...) In doing so, they not only reflected the tenets of America's broader intellectual ethos (i.e., notions of democracy) but also cultivated the ground for philosophy in the postbellum period. (shrink)

The Transcendentalist: a review of research and criticism is the first comprehensive bibliography of American Transcendentalism. Many of the Transcendentalists discussed here have not been covered in general bibliographies of American literature, and over half have not been favored by individual bibliographies of secondary works. This book rectifies these omissions and evaluates nearly a century and a half of writings by and about Transcendentalists.

For Stanley Cavell, the specific and contemporary theme of the ordinary sets off from America and the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau, in order to reinvent itself in Europe with ordinary language philosophy – Wittgenstein and Austin. But in order to understand this, it is necessary to perceive what Cavell calls, inspired by Wittgenstein and Thoreau, “the uncanniness of the ordinary,” inherent to its anthropological thematization. In his preface to the recent work of Veena Das, Life a...

A guide to the major and minor figures who shaped Transcendentalism in New England, particularly between 1830 and the Civil War. While most of the entries are for American thinkers, international figures who advanced Transcendentalism in New England and who were alive until at least 1830 are also covered.

American transcendentalists were eager to oppose structural evils such as slavery and poverty. The 1840s were characterized by experiments and debates about whether and how such evils could be opposed. Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, following Thomas Carlyle and William Ellery Channing, set the terms of this debate. In the end, despite their different anthropologies, ecclesiologies, and prescriptions for opposing evil, they agree that spiritual reform is integral to sociopolitical reform. This transcendentalist debate illuminates the (...) role of personal responsibility and reform in efforts to oppose structural evil in our own time. (shrink)

How can we build a path from the binary of gender to the unity of common humanity? What kind of difference can the “different voice” of feminism make as a human voice? In this article, Naoko Saito argues that the way we talk about the difference of a “different voice” needs to be radically transformed. To envision a route to such a transformation, she explores an alternative possibility of feminism in the American transcendentalism of Margaret Fuller and Ralph (...) Waldo Emerson. First, Saito critically examines the politics of recognition and suggests a susceptibility to binary thinking in its approach. Second, as a way of transcending the binary mode of thinking, Saito introduces the humanist feminism of the nineteenth-century American transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. Third, as a way of elucidating the radicality of Fuller's transcendentalist feminism, Saito introduces the feminine voice of two male philosophers — Ralph Waldo Emerson and Stanley Cavell — as her conversational partners. By radically converting the way we talk about difference of voice, the transcendentalist feminism of Fuller, Emerson, and Cavell provides a third way that lies beyond the politics of recognition and care ethics. In conclusion, Saito proposes that the cultivation of the feminine subject requires an alternative political education that resists assimilation into political realism. This would realize our common humanity and, in its crossing of divides between men and women, would create democracy from within. (shrink)