American Transcendentalism

American Transcendentalism超验主义理论崇尚直觉，反对理性和权威，强调人有能力凭直觉直接认识真理，人能超越感觉获得知识，因此，人的存在就是神的存在的一部分，人在一定范围内就是上帝 , 自然界是神对人的启示，人可以从自然界认识真理，了解物质发展规律，得到精神道德原则方面的启示。

American Transcendentalismflourished primarily in Concord and Boston, in the 19th century and had profound influence on American culture and literatureA loose collection of eclectic ideas about literature, philosophy, religion, social reform, and the general state of American culture different meanings for each person involved in the movementdifficult to say definitively whom can be considered a transcendentalistdisagree about the ideas and legacy

The Transcendental Club

September 8, 1836, the day of the Harvard bicentennial celebration and the day before the publication of NatureHenry Hedge, George Putnam, George Ripley, and Emerson Cambridge a symposium or periodic gathering of persons who found the present state of thought in American "very unsatisfactory." "in the way of protest" on behalf of "deeper and broader views"

In his essay "The Transcendentalist," Emerson explained transcendentalism is “idealism; idealism as it appears in 1842".

Emerson’s Definition

Transcendentalism in the 19th Century was more

than a trend in American literature. It was a philosophical

movement, but it owed its development as much to

democracy as to European philosophers.

Transcendentalism centered on the divinity of each

individual; but this divinity could be self-discovered only

if the person had the independence of mind to do so.

Philosophically:Individuals can intuitively receive higher truths, transcending the limits of rationalism. (To those intuited with imagination, the visible world offers endless clues about the invisible world whose truths stand eternally behind the factual world perceived by the senses.)

The belief:

Literarily:An emphasis on symbolic representation

Its Romantic Characteristics:

the importance of intuition

the exaltation of the individual over society

the new and thrilling delight in nature

fascination with the Gothic and the Oriental

the desire to build a national literature and culture

Its sources:

1. the romantic literatures of Europe

2. Neo-platonism( spirit prevails over matter)

3. German idealistic philosophy (intuition as a means of piercing to the real essence of things)

4. the revelations of Oriental mysticism

The major features of Transcendentalism

Oversoul ---a new way of looking at the world.(the profound and all-encompassing spiritual power)Individual--- a new way of looking at the man. Nature --- a new way of looking at nature(The indwelling of divinity in man and nature. Man is part of nature, and nature is part of God,and they are parts of a great whole.That is,God ,man and nature are sharers in a universal soul, the Oversoul.)

Oversoul“the unseen Creator and Administrator of Nature”

The Over-Soul is Emerson's celebration of the mystery of the human soul in matter and its mysterious existence as "part and particle" with the eternal One. The image of the "One" or the essential unity of the universe that is the absolute is a concept which is both Eastern and Neoplatonic. Emerson describes this One as infusing all of the life and forming the nature of human nature. It is God emanating through-out the universe and concentrating his nature in human consciousness.

Ralph Emerson(1803-1882)Father of American literature

1. He creatively defined some basic parameters of the American individual

2. His social and literary liaisons helped the formation of American culture and letters

1. the proponent of “the American newness” -----Irving Howe

2. the “voice oracular” who challenged the “bitter knowledge” of his “monstrous, dead, unprofitable world”. ---Matthew Arnold

Ralph Emerson(1803-1882)

3. the initial force “ on which Thoreau built, to which Whitman gave extension, and to which Hawthorne and Melville were indebted by being forced to react against its philosophical assumptions.” ---F.O. Matthiessen4.“I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil.” ------ Whitman

Ralph Emerson(1803-1882)

“ a little beyond”

Beyond the limitations of pure reason, beyond inherited conventions, and beyond the normal but low expectations for the self

the infinite potential of the individual , the need to go a little beyond European cultural norms “The American Scholar” (1837)

“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”

Chronology of Emerson's Life

1803, Born in Boston to William and Ruth Haskins Emerson.1811, Father dies of tuberculosis.1821, Graduates from Harvard and begins teaching at his brother William's school for young ladies in Boston. 1825, Enters Harvard Divinity School. 1829, Marries Ellen Tucker and is ordained minister at Boston's Second Church. 1832, Resigns position as minister and sails for Europe. 1833, Meets Wordsworth, Coleridge, J. S. Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Returns to Boston in November, where he begins a career as a lecturer.

 

Chronology of Emerson's Life

1836, Publishes first book, Nature. 1838, Delivers the “Divinity School Address.” 1841, Essays published (contains “Self-Reliance,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” “History"). 1844, Essays, Second Series published (contains “The Poet,” “Experience,” “Nominalist and Realist”). 

Waldo Emerson is truly the center of the American transcendental movement, setting out most of its ideas and values in a little book, Nature, published in 1836, that represented at least ten years of intense study in philosophy, religion, and literature, and in his First Series of essays.

Emerson

The best way to get at Emerson is to come at him all at once, in the ninety-five pages of his little book called Nature, issued anonymously in 1836, which contains the compressed totality of all that he would subsequently patiently reveal.

Nature

Nature is considered the "gospel" of American Transcendentalism. It has an Introduction and eight chapters: 1.Nature 2. Commodity 3. Beauty 4. Language 5. Discipline 6. Idealism 7. Spirit 8. Prospects. The major thesis of the essay, in Emerson's words, is that we should now "enjoy an original relation to the universe," and not become dependent on past experiences of others or on holy books, creeds , dogma.

Nature

Alone in the woods one day, he experiences a moment of ecstasy. This is a moment of conversion .

Nature

Self-Reliance“Self-Reliance” is extracted from Emerson’s Essays: First Series(1841). In “Self-Reliance” Emerson reveals his three major points.

Three Major points in Self-Reliance

Emerson maintains that “Trust thyself” and “Insist on yourself; never imitate.”Emerson appeals to people not to be a conformist.Emerson believes that the terror that scares people from self-trust is consistency( If they wished to, all young men could do what great men have always done, make their own laws and live according to their own independent principles.)

The American Scholar (1837)

As “Man Thinking”, the Scholar should know how to think when confronted with Nature, the Past (in the form of books) and Action (life). Emerson particularly warns that the past should be used to inspire and not to enslave the scholar. Emerson argued in the speech that the age called to the Scholar for active participation and leadership, which further emphasizes the importance of the individual.

The Major Themes in Emerson’s Works:

1. the emphasis on the independence and separateness of the individual, and the right (and duty) of man rise to his full potential, asserting the inalienable worth of every man.

Another sign of our times…is the new importance given to the single person.

2. the world should be experienced freshly through each man’s direct contact with nature and his own soul

3. the importance of learning through physical activity in the everyday world

Emerson’s Influences on A.L.

He called on American Writers to write about America in a peculiarly American way.His perception of humanity and nature as symbols of universal truth encouraged the development of the symbolist movement in A. art and literature.He embodied a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period.

Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)

to maintain one's self on this earth is not hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely"

"He was bred to no profession; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun." ----- Emerson

The facts of Thoreau's life are appropriately spare for one who wrote, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairsbe as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand. . . ." He was born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts; graduated from Harvard College in 1837; made a living primarily by surveying land and helping with the family pencil-making, though he taught school for several years when he was in his 20s and lectured from time to time from 1838 until 1860; traveled rarely (but almost always wrote about it when he did); and died at the age of 44 on May 6, 1862. Neither he nor any of his three siblings married. As he recommended to others, Thoreau actively sought this simplicity in his circumstances in order to enjoy extraordinary richness in his intellectual and spiritual life, and his writings testify to his success.

Major works

A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers(1849)Walden, or Life in the Woods(1854)Civil Disobedience(1849)

WALDEN POND

Reproduction of Thoreau's cabin near Walden Pond, where he lived from 1845-47.

Thoreau’s description of Walden Pond

Thoreau described Walden Pond as "blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both."

Thoreau's 1846 survey of Walden Pond, from Walden.

Thoreau's Walden artistically recreated real-life

experience and becomes a symbolic model or

paradigm for an embodied spiritual questspiritual quest ,for

a journey from the "gross" to the divine

"necessaries of life."

Walden

Walden is far from a simple account of his physical life at the pound. In it, beautifully integrated with the actual narration, is a wealth of thought, comments on life in the United States and in ancient times, brilliant descriptions of characters he met in the woods ranging from itinerant woodcutters to woodchucks, legends and historical anecdotes, reflections on his reading,all told with his characteristic ironical humor, startling paradox and poetic imagination.

Walden

Walden is a faithful record of his reflection when Threau was in solitary communion with nature, an eloquent indication that he not only embraced Emerson’s Transcendentalist philosophy but went even further to illustrate the pantheistic quality of nature.So Walden is a book on self-culture and human perfectibility, a book about man, what he is and what he should be and must be.

Walden

Table of Contents   1.  Economy: Parts A - B - C - D - E 2. Where I Lived, & What I Lived for 3. Reading 4. Sounds 5. Solitude 6. Visitors 7. The Bean-Field 8. The Village 9. The Ponds: Parts A - B

10. Baker Farm 11. Higher Laws 12. Brute Neighbors 13. House-Warming 14. Former Inhabitants; & Winter Visitors 15. Winter Animals 16. The Pond in Winter 17. Spring 18. Conclusion

Chapter two:Where I lived, and What I lived for

Thoreau wanted to get the most from his life by determiningwhat was really important, and he did that by removing himself somewhat from the normal life of Concord.One side of this was economic: he reduced his material needs by living simply, so that he would not have to spend much time supporting a lifestyle that he did not need or care about. The other side was spiritual, not unlike the spiritual retreats of eastern and western religions. And it worked. Thoreau liked it so much that he lived in his cabin for more than two years, and he came back with a great story.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.

“Conclusion” chapter of Walden

I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

“Conclusion” chapter of Walden

Thoreau says, “I learned this, at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.” That is what freedom really is.

“Conclusion” chapter of Walden

He concludes the paragraph: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

This is the main message of the book: if you advance

in the direction of how you imagine your life, not how

convention dictates that it should be, then you will find

success on a scale undreamed through reasonable

expectations.

“Conclusion” chapter of Walden

A book about self-culture and human perfectibility

A book about living without luxuries, but it’s not that they are luxuries but that they are distractions. He went into the woods in order to cut life to the bone and suck out the marrow, to get down to the bare essentials, and to make sure he wasn't missing what is important. A book of criticizing modern civilization

Walden