Critical Analysis Essay

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The Transcendentalists

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transcendentalism

  • A group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century
  • Began as a protest against the general state of culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School
  • Believed in an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.

Unitarianism

  • Transcendentalists preached the idea of finding God through nature and natural experience. The Transcendentalists’, especially Emerson’s, ideals of individuality and self-reliance moved Unitarianism from corporate experience and traditional worship to an emphasis on individual worship.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

  • American essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early 19th century
  • "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Graduated from Harvard in 1821 at the age of eighteen
  • When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."

Transcendentalism

  • In Nature, Emerson defines nature as an all-encompassing divine entity inherently known to us in our unfettered innocence, rather than as merely a component of a world ruled by a divine, separate being learned by us through passed-on teachings in our experience.

Nature

  • Nature is the first significant work to establish a new way of looking at The Americas and its raw, natural environment--new and with no man-made meaning. With this clean slate, Emerson was able to see nature through new eyes and rebuild nature's role in the world.

Emerson’s Nature

  • The way by which supernatural influence pours in upon the soul is intuition, but Emerson prefers to call it the reason as against the understanding (or common sense).

Emerson’s Nature

  • “Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.”