American Romanticism and Transcendentalism

Literature book link: Prentice Hall Grade 11

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Notes on Transcendentalism (1830’s – 1860) 

Transcendentalism—the view that the basic truths of the universe lie beyond the knowledge we obtain from our senses, reason, logic, or laws of science. We learn these truths through our intuition, our “Divine Intellect.”

Example: We can tell by using our reason, logic, science, and the senses, whether a person is dead or alive; we cannot tell by using our reason, logic, science, or the senses, whether it is good to be alive.

Transcend—go beyond senses, reason, logic, or laws of science.

Intuition—that which enables us to know the existence of our own souls and their relation to a reality beyond the physical world and to understand the abstract. The faculty of knowing without relying solely on the senses.

Concrete—having physical, material reality which can be perceived by the senses

Abstract—not having physical, material reality, not perceivable by the senses

The Oversoul—God; the Universal Being (Emerson’s term)

The Divine Intellect—part of God in each man; intuition; innate understanding of what is right and good; direct line of communication between God and man; the Divine Animal

Materialism—concern with the physical world rather than the spiritual

Evil: According to the Transcendentalists, evil does not exist. Evil is the absence of good—just as cold is the absence of heat, or dark is the absence of light.

The Anti-Transcendentalists: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville disagreed specifically with the Transcendentalists' view of evil. They believed in its existence, and they were also very skeptical of the Transcendentalists’ view of man as naturally good or divine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Father of Transcendentalism (1803-1882) believed the concrete to be symbolic of the abstract: This belief is called idealism and is as old as Plato.

Emerson’s most well known “Disciple”: Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): Author of Walden

Transcendentalist Beliefs

—The spiritual unity of all forms of being with God, humanity, and nature all sharing a universal soul—the Oversoul

—The inherent goodness (divinity) of man and nature

—The value of individualism

—The belief that the natural world is symbolic of the spirit world

—That society is the source of corruptive, distracting materialism

—That man is naturally good, even divine, because of his Divine Intellect

—That nature is inherently good because it is symbolic of the spirit (God)

—That God, the Oversoul, is the universal soul that permeates all being (much like “The Force”) 

Concept:

Transcendentalism is an extreme form of Romanticism and shares its views of man, nature, God, and society.

God: To the Transcendentalists, God is the Oversoul, the soul of the Universe. God is like "The Force" (in Star Wars) but without a Dark Side.

Imagine a sea or ocean of benevolence that surrounds us. This sea has no surface and no bottom. We float in this sea like little bottles.

This is the Transcendentalist idea of what the Oversoul is.

The Transcendentalists were not Christians in the traditional sense. Their vision of God was Unitarian—not Trinitarian.

Man: Go back to your image of the bottomless, surface-less sea. Man is a bottle floating in the sea. The bottle is filled with a drop of the same water in which he floats. There is a cork in the bottle.

The drop of water is the Divine Intellect or intuition—a piece of God which defines each individual person. Christians might refer to this part of man as his conscience or perhaps his soul.

In his essay “The Poet,” Emerson refers to the experience in the following way:

"...unlocking, at all risks, human doors and suffering [allowing] the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up in the life of the Universe; his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally understandable as the plants and animals."

According to the Transcendentalists, man is not merely good—he is divine because of his Divine Intellect.

(Reincarnation is a belief tangential to Transcendentalism. When the “bottle” breaks, the drop of “water” returns to the “sea,” from where, conceivably, it might find itself in a new “bottle.” The Transcendentalists did not greatly concern themselves with this concept.)

Nature: To the Transcendentalists, nature was a reflection of the "Oversoul" and the way to communicate with the "Oversoul." Contemplation of nature enables man to “pop his cork” and become one with God. 

Nature is good, beautiful, and a reflection of, and conduit to, God.

Questions: 

Question: What prevents the individual from following his Divine Intellect and doing what is good?

Answer: Society and its corrupting materialism.

According to the Transcendentalists, society is corruptive because, under its influence and pressure to conform, man is discouraged and distracted from listening to his Divine Intellect and doing what he knows in his heart to be good.

Question: Why may man—as Emerson puts it—“Trust [himself]”?

Answer: What he means is, that each person may trust his Divine Intellect—so to trust oneself is to trust God.

Under the right circumstances, man may “pop his cork” and mingle his drop of water with the rest of the sea that surrounds him, experiencing complete oneness with the Oversoul.

Question: How does he do so?

Answer: He frees himself from corruptive materialism and the concerns of the material, physical, civilized world. He communes with God through contemplation of Nature.

Emerson refers to this experience of becoming one with God as becoming a “transparent eyeball” in his essay “Nature”:

"I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing; I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part or parcel of God."

Question: What if a person’s Divine Intellect tells him to do something wrong, like rob a bank or kill someone?

Answer: It won’t. (But can you conceive of a situation in which doing something generally considered morally wrong, might, in fact, be the right thing to do? Think “Much Madness is Divinest Sense.” Your Divine Intellect would guide you, according to the Transcendentalists.

Question: How can one tell whether his impulses come from the Divine Intellect or the selfish, materialistic self?

Answer: His Divine Intellect, in communion with the Oversoul, released through contact with nature, will tell him. (But really, don’t you think you know right from wrong, even if you do not always do what is right?)

Transcendentalism notes source: http://spannamericanstudies2.wiki.lovett.org/Transcendentalism+Notes 

“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Key Terms:                                               

Individualism—"a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control."                    

Romanticism—"a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual."