TRANSCENDENTALISM

BASIC PREMISES

• A union of the individual psyche with the world psyche
• It begins with self-knowledge
• Living simply, not materialistically
• Equality to all humans
• The goal of utopia in the god given world we live in

TRANSCENDENTALISTS VIEW ON US POLITICS

• They did not approve of killing Native Americans
• They thought all humans should be equal
• Strongly against slavery
• They thought the government was corrupt
• They wanted a free nation for all

IMMANUEL KANT

• He was a german philosopher
• He came up with the term transcendental
• He was one of the first transcendentalist

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

• For Emerson this was not a new philosophy
• The oldest of thoughts was idealism
• Transcendentalists were idealists but much broader
• Highlight of his life; he met Abe Lincoln

MARGARET FULLER

• She was a feminist
• She learned latin at 6 and greek at 10
• She was tactless
• She became America's First Women foreign correspondent
• She worked on the NY tribune

JONATHAN EDWARDS

• He was a christian preacher and philosopher
• His work was on concepts of beauty, harmony, and ethical fitingness
• He believed in gods wisdom through nature
• He preached equality and values
• He thought god spoke through birds and flowers

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

• He was a civil disobedient
• Never payed taxes
• He was arrested for not paying taxes
• He is sometimes cited as an anarchist
• He died at the age 44 but accomplished quite a lot

TRANSCENDENTALISM THEN

• It was the idea that men and women were equal
• Their knowledge comes through intuition and imagination
• Feminism was one of their strong points
• To be your god given spirit, not conforming to civil ideas
• Living a minamalisticc life in nature.

TRANSCENDENTALISM NOW

• We all have bit of transcendentalism
• Feminism, being unique and free
• We still crave the idea of Utopia
• It is mostly a lost way of thinking
• There are not any recoreded modern transcendentalists