Lesson 6: Development of an American Culture

Hudson River School of Art

Transcendentalists

Transcendentalism is the first true American contribution to philosophy and intellectual thought. Although the transcendentalists offer no specific set of beliefs, the movement offered a systematic way of understanding the world and humankind's place in it. The intellectuals were not philosophers. They were poets, novelists, social critics, and reformers. The two most important figures were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Basic Principles

1. Self-Reliance and Individualism

2. Identity of Moral Laws

3. Rejection of Sensuous Experience

4. Importance of and Reverence for Nature

5. Absolute Optimism

Webster's Dictionary