Transcendentalism A literary, intellectual and social movement advocating spiritual ideals that “transcend” the physical world. It asserts that God is.

Transcendentalism

A literary, intellectual and social movement advocating spiritual ideals that “transcend” the physical world. It asserts that God is realized by means of intuition and through nature, but not through books or doctrines of any established religion.

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New England 1803-1882

Transcendentalism

Whitman

Hawthorne

Melville

Emily

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Transcendentalism• A revolution in human consciousness.

A “miracle of enthusiasm”.

A critique of old religious attitudes.

• It’s when spirituality, ethics and politics meet in the pursuit of social reform.

It’s the belief that people are inspired by their relationship to nature.

• It empowers the individual.

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Four major sources of influence:

Transcendentalism

Vedic Philosophy of India

German Idealism

English Romanticism

The American Landscape

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Vedic Philosophy

Spiritual self-discipline

Seek direct knowledge of God

Knowledge is gained by intuition

God is the Supreme Self

God is the ground of all Being

&

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RomanticismA broad cultural

movement in Germany, England and America that emphasized the value of emotion, the importance of human connections to nature

and the right to question all forms of social,

political and religious authority.

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German IdealismKant, Ficte, Schelling & Hegel

Free Will

Self-Reliance

Immortality of the Soul

Freedom of the human Spirit

Cultural Authenticity

They linked Romanticism to the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment

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ape

Nature symbolizes the Spirit.

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Transcendentalist themes

• Intuition

Imagination

• Conscience

Self-awareness

• Spontaneity

Divine Inspiration

• National Identity

The Soul

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“America shall introduce a pure religion.” Emerson

Old-Testament sin & guilt

Rigid Orthodoxy

Authoritarianism

Justifications for slavery

Mediocrity

Mindless Conformity

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Transcendentalist Values

“Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”

— Thoreau

Simple Living,

Frugality

Harmony with nature

The right of individual to self-government

The sacredness of Life

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Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

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“Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism all around you.”

Lincoln

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Southern aristocracy wealthy oligarchs.

Lincoln fights treason

militant rebellion*

America’s northern & southern commercial

infrastructure was connected.

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The east coast:Cotton/textile

Industry, shipping industry and the banking industry.

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Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”

Lincoln

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