The Great Transcendentalist Movement Essay Research Paper free essay sample

The Great Transcendentalist Movement Essay, Research Paper The Great Transcendentalist Movement During the late 1800s and early 1900s, a new epoch was developing in American society. The United States was an idealistic state with separate beliefs and life styles. One of the most challenging life styles introduced during this clip was transcendental philosophy. Many writers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathanial Hawthorne, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, developed this thought and tried to do people understand the significance behind this new manner of lfe. Through his extended Hagiographas of books, essays and poesy, Thoreau gave the American populace a deep penetration to the new universe of transcendental philosophy. While he was turning up, Thoreau seldom left his birth town of Concord. He felt that adult male didn? Ts need wider skylines in order to compose expeditiously ( Hoff, 31 ) . He wrote his private ideas in diaries to assist him compose talks and books, and neer wrote or spoke about what he himself had non experienced ( Hoff, 32 ) . We will write a custom essay sample on The Great Transcendentalist Movement Essay Research Paper or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Thoreau attened Harvard, but believed that he had non truly erudite anything of worth while there ( Hoff, 34 ) . This is surprising because most people think of Thoreau as an rational, who most decidedly had a sound instruction that he appreciated. Thoreau was a? skilled naturalist ( Whitman, 802 ) ? who was highly knowledgable about conditions, geology, vegetations and zoology. He was known to be rather friendly with birds and other such animate beings. He was a self-proclaimed mystic, transcendentalist and natural philosopher. ( Whitman, 802 ) . The first individual to utilize the word? transcendental? was German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He used the term ? nonnatural doctrine? to depict the survey of pure head and its signifiers. The word? transcendental philosophy? is defined as the? belief or philosophy asseverating the being of an ideal religious world that transcends the empirical and scientific and is cognizable through intuition ( Koster, 1 ) . ? It is besides known as, in doctrine and literature, ? the belief in a higher world than that found in sense experience or in a higher sort of cognition than that achieved by human ground ( Encarta ) . ? This thought originated with the Greek philosopher, Plato, who had recognized the being of absolute righteousness. American transcendental philosophy began with the formation of the Transcendental Club in Boston in 1836. The leaders of this motion included essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, womens rightist and societal reformist Margaret Fuller, curate Theodore Parker, teacher Bronson Alcott, philosopher William Ellery Channing, and Thoreau. This nine published a magazine, The Dial, and some members performed an experiment of communal life at Brook Farm in Massachusetts during the 1840s. The American roots of transcendental philosophy began in New England with Puritanism. This was the thought that transcendentalists were direct descendants of people that fled to this part in hunt of spiritual freedom. Another major influence of the nonnatural motion was Platonism. This ideal held the supreme God as being primary, with all other things derived from it. Romanticism besides played an of import function in the development of this new epoch. It was: The delectation in, and admiration at, the beauty and beneficience of nature, the acknowledgment of the single human being as being superior to society, the attendant expostulation to societal restraints upon the person, and, above all, the dominance of emotion and intuitive perceptual experience over ground ( Koster, 8 ) . It besides involved the jubilation of individuality and introspection. Another factor was that of Orientalism. Many people believed that American involvement in the Orient began as a strictly economic involvement, but so moved on to other things such as spiritualty and morality. Religious philosophers that appeared subsequently applied Plato? s thought of transcendental philosophy to the fact that God could non be described nor understood through the voice of homo experience ( Encarta ) . The Scholastics recognized six nonnatural constructs: kernel, integrity, goodness, truth, thing and something. The footings transcendent and transcendental were used in a more narrow and proficient sense by Scholastic philosophers tardily in the Middle Ages to signify constructs of unrestricted generalization using to all types of things ( Encarta ) . ? American Doctrine: Transcendentalism. ? hypertext transfer protocol: //www.uh.edu/~cfree/courses/americanphil/transc.html. Arpin, Gary Q. ? The American: Renascence: The Literary Coming of Age. ? Elementss of Literature. By Richard Sime. Fifth Course. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1997. 230-31. Crowell, Robert L. ? Thoreau, Henry David. ? The Reader? s Encyclopedia of American Literature. 1962 erectile dysfunction. ? Henry David Thoreau. ? Why They Wrote: Devils, Thoreau, Flaubert, Clemens, Stevenson. By Rhoda Hoff. 1961. 31-60. Koster, Donald N. Transcendentalism in America. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975. Microsoft Encarta 96 Encylclopedia ( 1996 ) . [ Computer plan ] . Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation. ? Thoreau, Henry David. ? American Reformers. By Alden Whitman. 801-03. Thoreau, Henry David. ? Civil Disobedience. ? ? Transcendentalism. ? hypertext transfer protocol: //www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/474/ . 5-3-99. ? Transcendentalism