Ralph Waldo Emerson

An influential literary movement in the nineteenth century, transcendentalism placed an emphasis on the wonder of nature and its deep connection to the divine. As the two most prominent figures in the transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau whole-heartedly embraced these principles. In their essays “Self-Reliance” and “Civil Disobedience”, Emerson and Thoreau, respectively, argue for individuality and personal expression in different manners. In “Self-Reliance”, Emerson calls for individuals to speak their minds and resist societal conformity, while in “Civil Disobedience” Thoreau urged Americans to publicly state their opinions in order to improve their own government.

"In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, - no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were the giants during the 19th century American Transcendentalism movement. Their influential work brought upon shared beliefs on concerning spiritual perspectives, government interference, and the ideology of cultural values in American society. Nature has a multitude of meaning if looked at it from all angles, but deeper within nature is the reflection of what you exert while in it. However they agree on the human condition, the two authors speak with different tones that reflect how nature affects the entirety of man’s spirit. While both Emerson and Thoreau practice the spirit of the human condition, Emerson focused his energy on how “[nature’s] philosophical import [is]…unchanged by man” (215.) where Thoreau implied that we are “subjects of an experiment” (1051).

Chris McCandless: a man so infatuated with nature, he practically committed suicide to bring himself nearer to it. This extreme liking for nature, along with other ideals, makes up the core tenets of the transcendentalist philosophy. McCandless demonstrates other tenets of transcendentalism as well, most notably the supremacy of the individual, by detaching himself from the mammon of this world. Another way he shows the supremacy of the individual, by the belief that one should not conform to the usual policies of life, causes him great trouble in some cases. As well as the belief that the individual supersedes all else, McCandless received much of his inspiration from nature. Finally, always following what he believes correct, McCandless

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Emerson is a firm believer of maintaining self-reliance and values rather than following the crowd. He also explains that in order to be truly successful in life, a person must make decisions and trust in his or her judgment. In today’s society, teenagers are more likely to not be self-reliant because the teens feel they will be judged for having different beliefs. People today need to realize that they should not conform to be like the rest of the world, they must not depend on the judgment and criticism of others, and people must refuse to travel somewhere in order to forget their personal problems. Through Emerson’s piece, readers are able to

This was the battle started with the “shot heard ‘round the world” as Ralph Waldo Emerson observed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered one of the greatest authors of the nineteenth century. He was born a son of a Unitarian minister, and his mother kept boardinghouses. Emerson’s mother was determined to send as many of her children as possible to Harvard to be ministers. Emerson’s aunt became his educator, pushing him to challenge his ideas. Emerson went to and graduated from Harvard, to become a schoolteacher. After studying theology, Emerson began to preach as a Unitarian pastor. Ralph Waldo Emerson then began to believe more in the individual and intuition rather than the church. During this time, 1832,

his profession as a pastor in search for vital truth and hope. But his father

During the Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quote in his booklet, Nature, gave a lot of insight on the identity of the human race. His quote, “A man is a god in ruins” indicates a sense of the “fallen” nature, and really emphasizes our faults and our limits, and many authors during this time person also seemed to follow this philosophy. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s other work, Self-Reliance, he is also able to capture this same essence from text to text. In addition to Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville all follow the same philosophy in their own respective texts. The reader is able to see a common theme consistently throughout Self-Reliance, Economy (in Walden), The Artist of the Beautiful and Bartleby the Scrivener and Benito Cereno. Throughout each of these texts, the reader essentially focuses on how the nature of the human race focuses on how we are more than ordinary stone ruins, but we are lesser than Gods. The optimism of Emerson’s quote exploring the nature of the human person is depicted in their own way and different writing style throughout all of these different texts.

About a century ago, such scholar as Nietzsche disregarded the principles of modern “factualism”. Later on, Weber established the end of the era of generalists. One cannot but state extreme specialization and narrowly focused technical work to have changed certain visions into straight forward realities. Concerning this essay, it is mainly aimed at analyzing the sociological speculations of two outstanding thinkers John Winthrop and Ralph Waldo Emerson that, in view of widely-acknowledged scholars, reflect the state of public opinion even though they date back over two centuries; to be precise, the focus lies in comparing and contrasting the utopian visions of the two above mentioned thinkers, making emphasis on what utopia meant for these two authors and the way it was supposed to be achieved. Moreover, the paper is focused on interpreting and coming to terms with the pivotal social movements of Puritanism as well as transcendentalism. Speaking about the peculiarities of social theories, it is necessary to take a view of recognized changes in vast domains of social life and culture. The research will emphasize the main reconstructions of social and cultural theories due to historical events. The essay is also targeted on finding out whether it is logically to discount all the concepts, methods of the past, and acknowledge the new theoretical assumptions.

Emerson was born in 1803, into a family of ministers. He went to Harvard where he

Ralph Waldo Emerson							I am writing this essay on the beliefs and thoughts of Ralph Waldo Emerson on the subjects of individuality, society, government, technology, and spirituality.

Human nature is something that never seems to change. While humans all seem to be different from one another through physical and emotional attributes, their psychological behaviors are all mostly very similar. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, many authors successfully could explain the characteristics of human nature and the effects that it has on everyone and everything surrounding human beings. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allen Poe all convey the behavior of human nature in separate ways. These three authors show the curiosity, drive for perfection, and fear of human nature throughout their texts in detail. With these characteristics being prominent in human nature itself, it

Nature and wilderness were very important ideas, to some extent, for St. John de Crevecoeur and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Each had their own opinions and ideas that contrasted against each other and were somewhat similar to each other; Emerson valued nature greatly, whether it be from looking at it as something to be proud of, to using nature as an example in his work, such as how we are a part of it and how random it can be. Crevecoeur believed that every land has its own form of culture as it does its own kind of nature. He describes how the land and nature was, and how it will be, by giving details of it in his pieces of work.

Often regarded as the leader of the Transcendentalist literary movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that the individual must look inward to find truth and knowledge. He emphatically stressed that one must practice self-reliance: the ability to trust one’s intuition and not conform to societal standards. Through the use of strict form, powerful imagery, and a wise tone, Emerson’s poem “Intellect” urges us to stay true to ourselves by refusing the practice of blind obedience.