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)

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)

The purpose of the paper is an analysis of the transformation of the concept “transcendentalism” in history of modern philosophy. I first reconstruct the Kantian idea of transcendental philosophy. After that I analyze the notion of transcendentalism, its definition and functions in the theories of Cohen and Cassirer and demonstrate that Neo-Kantian understanding of transcendentalism distinguishes itself from the Kantian and receives some features which allow for a transition from theory of knowledge to theory of culture and prepare the so (...) called “cultural turn”. Finally, I briefly consider the main directions of modern transcendentalism and their main features. (shrink)

Andrews explores spiritual practices that were the vital source from which everything else about Transcendentalism-texts, ideas, and social action-flowed. These practices are eminently available to spiritual seekers today, both those who are connected to conventional forms of religiosity and those who are allergic to 'religion.

Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement that arose prior to Darwin publishing The Origin of Species. It arose out of the Enlightenment, in which the importance of natural law in the working of the universe was recognized. Ralph Waldo Emerson was interested in exploring religious questions from the point of view of the enlightenment. For him, the human faculty of intuition was very interesting. After Darwin was published, most of science lost interest in exploring human intuition partly because no naturalistic basic (...) for it was known. Today, it is appropriate to return to the study of transcendentalism, building on what was done in the 19th century, but with a 21st century understanding of the laws of nature. Much work can be done from this perspective, possibly developing a new philosophy of the humanities. This is the defining work by the author of this approach to philosophy. (shrink)

In recent literature, it has been suggested that Lange’s social and political philosophy is separate from his neo-Kantian program. Prima facie, this interpretation makes sense given that Lange argues for an account of social norms that builds on Darwin and Smith rather than on Kant. Still, this paper argues that elements of psychophysiological transcendentalism can be found in Lange’s social and political philosophy. A detailed examination of the second edition of the History of Materialism, Schiller’s Poems, and the second edition (...) of The Worker’s Question reveals that Lange sought to develop a systematic foundation of psychophysiological transcendentalism that is presupposed in his social and political philosophy. This allows for a more detailed understanding of Lange’s practical philosophy and assures him a position in the tradition of neo-Kantian socialism. (shrink)

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)

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)

The opposition between transcendentalism and naturalism plays a key role in discussions about consciousness at the confluence of phenomenology and analytical philosophy. Associated with it is a whole range of research programs. However, the opposition between transcendentalism and naturalism in these programs is, as a rule, operational and not thematic in nature and presupposes that 1) Transcendentalism and naturalism as traditions are initially alien to each other; 2) The domain of their opposition is ontology. The article attempts to problematize these (...) premises based on one historical circumstance. Turning to the texts of Kant, the founder of transcendental philosophy, I intend to show that transcendentalism, which was first substantiated in them, is a version of naturalistic ontology, that is, a peculiarly interpreted naturalism that identifies nature with its natural scientific model and excludes constituting subjectivity from ontology. It is built not on the naturalization of phenomenology, but on the transcendentalization of natural science. Reinterpreting the experimental method in the spirit of the Copernican turn, Kant substantiates the apodictic nature and lack of alternative to the ontology of nature by turning nature into a correlate of consciousness and strictly limiting the principles of mathematical natural science to the boundaries of the phenomenal world. As a result, the true theme of philosophy—the thing in itself and transcendental subjectivity itself—is taken beyond the boundaries of ontology. The thematization of the naturalistic origins of transcendentalism and the removal of transcendental consciousness beyond the boundaries of ontology, carried out within its framework, thus reveals the problematic nature of these premises. The article also demonstrates that, despite significant differences in the understanding of transcendental philosophy and ontology between Kant and Husserl, the identified motives—the naturalistic nature of the ontological foundation and the meta-ontological character of transcendental subjectivity—remain of fundamental importance for the founder of phenomenology. This allows us to conclude that ontology is not the original domain of confrontation between transcendentalism and naturalism and to substantiate the compatibilist thesis according to which transcendentalism is compatible with ontological naturalism. (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)

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)

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)

. E. O. Wilson writes that the “choice between transcendentalism and empiricism” is this century's “version of the struggle for men's soul” . The transcendentalist argues for theism—that there is a God, a creator of the world. The empiricist instead makes the point that the notion of God, including morality and ethics, are adaptive structures of human evolution. Before entering the debate of the transcendentalist/empiricist controversy I analyze how things exist and suggest that all that is exists as united diversity, (...) as identity in difference. I argue that oneness by itself is intangible because wholes are concrete only through their tangible parts. I briefly discuss this understanding of existence in the realm of art to show that transcendence and immanence are not mutually exclusive but constitute each other. I conclude that existence, the hypostasis of unity in diversity, might be seen as a gift from absolute existence. In this view, the world might reveal itself as a gift that reflects the trinitarian existence of the Giver. (shrink)

Transcendentalism and the secular turn -- Transcendentalism in the postwar years -- Gender, reform, and ridicule -- Charles Ives : sound -- Joseph Cornell : things -- Truman Nelson : rage -- Beston, Oliver, Dillard, and fluid transcendentalism.

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)

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)

Valentin Kanawrow develops his system of critical metaphysics across five systematically linked monographs. The core of this pentalogy is the original concept of virtualistic transcendentalism. Kanawrow creates a new metaphysical system as a continuation and reorganization of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. The virtual is the domain of the pure a priori form of thought, which, however, must reach and realize experience in its regions. This transition from a priori to a posteriori is mediated by transcendental schematism – an entirely new theory (...) developed by Valentin Kanawrow. In its descent to experience, the transcendental schema devirtualizes itself and deduces the phenomena as formats of the true ontologizations of the given in experience. Transcendental phenomena result in plural regional critical ontologies, such as special metaphysical domains. The large-scale system of critical metaphysics of Valentin Kanawrow ends with a transcendental anthropology demonstratively developed on the conducted Analytics of the transcendental phenomena constituting the lifeworld of human being. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: I expand the notion of PL-metaphysics by introducing the approach of Hegel, who I regard as the chief PL-metaphysician. Also, I propose another substantiation of the division of metaphysics, namely, the criterion of the transparency/opacity of system settings, which I consider the most symptomatic for the differentiation of epistemologies, and believe plays the key role in understanding the (...) status of constructivism itself. By applying this criterion, we can differentiate transcendentalism and naturalism as two substantial epistemological meta-programs and show that constructivism will still remain a part of the transcendental program, even when there is an orientation towards PL-metaphysics, while Hegel’s version of PL-metaphysics will be considered a part of naturalism. (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)

The eminent and award-winning historian Robert A. Gross presents his long-awaited, immersive journey through Concord in the age of Emerson and Thoreau.

There is a small class of scholars whose aims and pursuits are of a different character. They value literature not as an end, but as an instrument to help ...

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.

The review presents the International Workshop “Transcendental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy-3: Nature of Transcendental Philosophy” held in Moscow on 19-22 April, 2018. The workshop was co-sponsored by the State Academic University for the Humanities, the Russian State University for the Humanities and the Foundation for the Humanities. The review examines the main topics of the workshop, summarises the main presentations and explicates the problem area of modern interpretations of Kant and the development of transcendentalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (...) The presentations, questions and discussions centred around the main problems of transcendentalism: the differences between the phenomenon and the thing in itself, between the first and second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, the relationship between realist and constructivist aspects of Kantian transcendentalism, the transformation of Kantian transcendental philosophy in Neo-Kantianism and phenomenology and more. (shrink)

This paper examines normative elements in Henri Lauener’s “open transcendentalism,” with an eye to evaluate distinctive theses. After setting out some of Lauener’s basic positions in this area, in comparison with related views in Quine’s work, I argue that the views surveyed converge on a normative and contextualist cognitivism in Lauener’s methodological and epistemological perspective. Though he resists similar conclusion in the name of anti-naturalism, I argue that his “open transcendentalism” is plausibly construed as a non reductive naturalism.

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)

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

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.

The author considers the methodological basis of neurotranscendentalism and discusses the question of whether its integration of the approaches of transcendentalism and neurosciences is effective and coherent. The study undertakes on the base of the comparative analysis of spatiotemporal and quantitative representations and how they are described in Kant’s philosophy and transcendental neuro-researches. The author infers that: 1) transcendentalism is not susceptible to the problem of the material correlate of a priori principles of the reason while neurosciences are primarily aimed (...) at detective it; 2) the integrated disciplines have essential diversities in the treatment of the crucial notions (a priori, representation, space, time, magnitude, perception, etc.); 3) neurosciences and transcendentalism have the ground for the integration on the level of the subject area; 4) neurotranscendentalism forms the interdisciplinary scope of researches which generates its own synthetic object – the “biological a priori”. (shrink)

This article seeks to grasp the meaning of Michel Henry's use of the term "transcendental" to understand its specific nature as pure experience that owes nothing to the constituted or the a posteriori. It then considers the methodological consequences and difficulties resulting from such a conception of the transcendental. According to my hypothesis, in order to maintain the "major division" between the empirical and the transcendental, material phenomenology is caught in a form of double bind. One cannot say much about (...) the transcendental without risking contamination by the empirical. As far as the constituted is concerned, it is certainly possible to refer to it, but actually there is nothing to say. This paper tests this interpretative hypothesis against a specific example, namely, the phenomenological description of feeling offered by Henry. The analysis concludes by considering whether material phenomenology does not lapse into what Rudolf Bernet calls a form of "hyper-transcendentalism" in the sense that the totality of empirical reality ends by being "transcendentalized". No basis can be provided for intentionality, as Henry sometimes claims: it becomes a superfluous concept. (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.

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...

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.

The author argues that despite appears to the contrary the transcendentalism naturalism dichotomy is neither exclusive nor exhaustive. It is possible for someone to give a transcendental argument demonstrating that the world must have certain characteristics. If the argument is correct, i.e., if water is necessarily H2O, then science and the naturalist will find water to be H2O in fact. One can therefore be a transcendentalist and naturalist at the same time. The dichotomy is not exhaustive either, since it is (...) possible to develop a philosophy which is descriptive of reality and yet is neither transcendental nor naturalistic. The author illustrates this alternative with a view he calls “Piecemeal Realism.”. (shrink)

I take the phrase ‘congenital transcendentalism’ from Santayana who defined it as ‘the spontaneous feeling that life is a dream’. ‘The loneliness which is the truth about things’ is a phrase of Virginia Woolf's. The thesis I will advance is that many expressions of doubt or denial of the shareable world are self-misunderstood manifestations of the state indicated by Woolf's expression. But the loneliness of which Woolf speaks must not be construed as the kind of loneliness which can be assuaged (...) by family, friends, lovers or company. Nor is it the loneliness which a convinced solipsist might experience. It is rather the loneliness of ‘that “I” and that “life of mine'” which is ‘untouched whichever way the issue is decided whether the world is or is not’. (shrink)

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

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)