American Transcendentalism

• Transcendentalism is a form of idealism that encompasses belief in intuitive knowledge, the indwelling of divinity in man and nature.

• The coming in of Spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.

• ---Henry D. Thoreau

Spring

A noisy silence

A lake that can calm our troubled souls.

Nothing is everything, nature says.

The world is on fire.

Is it beautiful or ugly?

American Transcendentalism

• 1. The first American intellectual movement to inspire a number of literary classics ( in Europe, it was a philosophy)

• 2. It stresses the unity of being---viewing God, man and nature as sharers in a universal soul-----Oversoul

• 3. It is a kind of idealism and romanticism

Puritanism

Man is fallen and can be saved by God ( Hard working, plain living and high thinking)

The economic boom Spiritual liberation

Transcendentalism

( New Adam and Eve)

( New being with God and nature)

Man and God and Eden

We cannot understand the America of the nineteenthcentury without comingto terms with Ralph Waldo Emerson

American Transcendentalism

• Leading transcendentalists ( reformers + idealists )

•

• 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson-- the leader

• 2. Henry David Thoreau-- the doer

• 3. Elizabeth Peabody-- children-kindergarten

• 4. Margaret Fuller-- women’s rights

• 5. Bronson Alcott— adult education and labor

• movement

Emerson Thoreau Fuller

B. Alcott E. Peabody

Who are they?

• 1. The young men and women under 35 from the Boston area

• 2. Genteel and well-educated, Harvard graduates

• 3. Unitarian Church 唯一神教派• 4. Teachers, lecturers, journalists and writers

What do they believe?

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.

---Emerson

•

Oversoul

God

Man

Nature

天地与我共生 , 万物与我为一 . --- 庄子

What do they do?

• 1. Talk and discuss---intellectual companionship and interests ( Brook Farm)

• 2. Work---living closer to nature and dignity of manual labor ( Thoreau)

• 3. Believe---human rights are divine in their right• 4. Write---The Dial ( 1840-1844)• 5. Reform---human rights, women’s rights• social changes

Where does Transcendentalism come from?

• Philosophy + religion + culture• 1. German idealism: Kant 康德 • 2. Goethe• 3. English literature: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlye)• 4. Plato• 5. Oriental literature ( The Sayings of Confucius )• 6. Quakerism ( 教友派 )• 7. Deism ( 自然神论 )

• The American frontier spirit ( optimism, individualism)

Brook Farm

Walden lake

Emerson’s grave stone

This is the place where Henry Thoreau lived alone for two yearsand two months

One of the greatest American thinkers lies buried here.

This is the teaching of God and nature, as transcendentalistsbelieved