Transcendentalism And Its Impact On Society

The book The Giving Tree is an example of the modern day transcendentalist belief of nature. In the book, there is a tree who meets a young boy. The tree loves the boy and reflects whatever emotion the boy feels. As time went on the boy began to get older and started to only come back to the tree when he was down on his luck, and each time the boy returned his problems were solved. The tree was always there for him until the day that he died. Nature is a core belief of

Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, central figures of Transcendentalism, expressed their beliefs through works such as “American Scholar” and “Into the Woods” in the nineteenth century. They believed that one must be in simplicity, solitude, and away from technology to appreciate the beauty of nature, which is essential for a better spiritual understanding of oneself. Transcendentalism, which focuses on spiritual interactions with nature, is relevant in today’s hectic life with temptations of materialistic goods and burdens of technology. The retreat that Webb offers every year is a good example of how Transcendentalism shapes students to have spiritual richness and mental strength. On retreats, students go off campus with bare necessities for three days to camp sites in nature to reflect and appreciate the beauty of the outdoors. Viewed through the lens of Transcendentalism, retreats allow students to prepare for a new and busy school year to come by helping them to realize their own goals, to get rid of distractions of technology, to get inspired by nature for a better understanding of themselves, and to enjoy a moment of solitude to truly reflect on the deeper meanings of life.

With the fact that remained in history, the primary conception of transcendentalism was led by the unitarianism, the reaction to the strict Calvinism, which supported that people should live the spiritual life in terms of a continuing effort to cultivate one’s own spiritual resources. David Robinson explicated it in his article “Transcendentalism”:

In today’s society, it appears that every week the general public is raving about a new app that was released or some newly created piece of technology. Week in and week out magazines and news sources highlight the newest inventions and and must-have items, encouraging the public to rush for the stores to acquire the new big thing. While such a concept is commonplace in today’s society, there was a time when this idea of materialism was a rarity, and, to a certain extent, frowned upon. American Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement during the 1820s and ‘30s, that emphasized the importance and purity of the individual, and argued that society and its institutions corrupted the purity of every individual. Transcendentalism

“Transcendentalism […] has primarily much the position of the sun […] We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion […] But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard” (Chesterton, 24). These words encapsulate the driving rationale of the anti-transcendentalist argument – that although individuals seek transcendentalism, they can never truly realize it, or, to compare with the sun, see it. Rather, they inevitably place attention on the “moon,” the perspicuous reflection of transcendentalism – that is, individualism – and neglect the responsibilities of society. Emerson institutes the philosophy of transcendentalism in his essay, Nature, teaching that divinity pervades all nature and humanity. Although transcendentalists would offer that man can only better his spiritual life by embracing individualism, pursuing the ideal, and being one with nature, the ability and appeal of transcendentalism to advance enlightenment upon the soul of the individual rests on the false suppositions that feckless man can achieve perfection and that nature embodies God, thus causing transcendentalism to conversely detriment the spiritual life of the individual, isolating him, prescribing his rebellion, and invigorating his selfish pursuits, simply because he confides his soul in creation instead of the Creator (Tocqueville, 482).

Even though there is about one hundred and eighty years apart from the year transcendentalism started to the year two thousand seventeen, we can still see many similarities, and some notable differences between these two era. Transcendentalism movement is a philosophical movement that happen in between 1820s to 1830s in the United States. The movement started with Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous philosopher and writer. The main tenets of the philosophy are individualism, connect with nature, and religion. We can see a lot of their ideas still apply in today’s modern society, even after all these years.

A month ago, you asked me to inform you on the goals and ideas of the transcendentalist philosophers. After some heavy research on the topic, I am ready to inform you to the finest of my abilities. How about we start with a little background and history? Sounds good? Great! First, transcendentalism is a movement that started in the early to mid-nineteenth century. According to definitions online, a transcendentalist Philosopher is a person that accepts ideas as a way of understanding life relationships rather than religious beliefs. Moreover, Transcendentalism describes a very modest idea. Men, women, children, and people in general are knowledgeable about themselves and their surroundings that transcends beyond what they can see, feel, taste, or touch. Most believe that this knowledge occurs as a result of intuition and imagination rather than logic or sense. As a result, the group declared cynicism of all recognized faiths, believing that spirituality lived in the individual, and the arbitration of a church was burdensome to attaining enlightenment.

The final prominent transcendentalism theme expressed in Walden is the importance of experiences. Transcendentalists believed personal experience is how one learned. Literally, people learned everything the hard way. Thoreau demonstrated this clearly in the experiment of living in the woods for two years. He explains in Walden that he wanted to experience living simply for an extended period of time. Notice that Thoreau did not speculate, draw conclusions, or even ask someone who had tried it. The only way, in his mind, that he was going to learn about living simply was to undergo it personally. In speaking about life in the chapter, “Where I lived and What I Lived For”, Thoreau said,“…if [life] proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”[4] He emphasized living and feeling everything to be able to understand life and its meaning.

Transcendentalism was a trend during the romantic period where some authors chose to depict the serenity and the innocence that nature holds. Transcendentalists also believed that living totally dependent on oneself brings out the best in a person. Being a fairly independent person myself, I can identify with some of their opinions about life and nature. The idea of nature being a spiritual experience is a rebellious idea compared to the rationalism of many others during the same time period. The transcendentalist writer of the late 1700’s, author Henry David Thoreau, shares the same thoughts about nature, independence, and recreation as I do.

Nature itself is very important in the world and as for self-reliance it was seen as being something you should be. Along with social reforms being something that is going against what society deems right. Transcendentalist believed that nature was a main aspect of life and that it was

The highly religious philosophy of Transcendentalism developed as the response of a group of people who felt that it was unnecessary to practice a religion (and live a life) that was based on fear. The first Transcendentalists set out to create a more liberal way of life that allowed for personal growth, justice and freedom. To truly understand the implications of Transcendentalism and why Transcendentalists believed what they did, one must first look at the root of Transcendentalism, Unitarianism.

Transcendentalism is all in the mind of others. Transcendentalism is what keeps people unique. Being a transcendentalist is when one will not conform. In the time when the poems “A Psalm of Life”, and “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls’ people were expected to conform to a certain way of life and be like robots to what societies standards say is the correct way of living.

Transcendentalism was a huge cultural movement in the nineteenth century; however, the ideas of the movement still continue to influence our society in the twenty-first century. These ideas of Transcendentalism have continued to exist throughout many years because the ideas remain relevant to society. In fact, the problems that many Transcendentalist writers encountered still happen today in new forms. These similar problems include conformity, the role of government in society, and the importance of nature. In general, people still feel that society needs to better itself for the benefit of all individuals, which is at the heart of Transcendentalism. Some of the ideas that Transcendentalists constantly defended included individualism,

Transcendentalism was an American literature movement urging people to look past everyday material life, and reach into their souls to find inner peace with themselves. Transcendentalism originally came from Kantian idealism. This idealism was credited by Immanuel Kant.

Transcendentalism, the belief that nature could better oneself, emerged during the early 1800s and became very popular shortly after. It was a growing trend for many who wanted to regret from conformity, and focus on themselves rather than the rules that society had already set up for them. During the mid 18th century to late 19th century, those who grew up in a religiously involved family or in an industrial area created their lives based on the virtues of Christianity while those who spent time with a greater sense of solitude founded their beliefs on the self-preserving properties of nature.