American Transcendentalism as a movement occurred during the American Renaissance, a time period marked by the blossoming of American art, literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. The inspiration for this philosophy on life stemmed from the ideas of a group known to many as the New England Transcendentalists. Although an actual organization officially called the Transcendental Club was formed in 1836, Transcendentalists themselves represented much more than just a group of social thinkers. Instead they represented a collaboration of shared thoughts and ideas on how to approach and live life.
Transcendental thought focused around the power of the individual to seek and understand truth, not through scientific observation and logical reasoning but through innate qualities like intuition and feeling. They believed that humans and nature are all connected by what Transcendentalists refer to as the Oversoul. In this way humans are directly linked to nature as partners to work with instead of as obsticals to overcome. It is Transcendentalists' belief that all individual ideas stem from some sort of natural phenomenon. Because of this strong belief in the power of the individual, Transcendentalists regarded the influence of external authority as a hindrance to individual actions and experiences.
Many people, including some Transcendentalists, believed the Oversoul to be God, even though anorganized religion is considered to be a hinderence to individuality. To transcendentalists organized religion creates a hierarchy of God over man. The Oversoul idea promotes the belief that divinity/God is contained in all things, including people. It was for this reason that a few of the Transcendentalists resented the fact that they had official followers of their way of thinking. They would much rather have people choose their own directions to take. In their minds, having followers would go against Transcendentalism beliefs and discredit Transcendentalism observations.
Transcendentalists are often referred to as followers of a purley optimistic belief system. This is because they believed that answers to everything could be found by using individual intuition to interpret natural occurrences to be spiritual facts of life. Meaning was the ultimate goal of Transcendentalist thinking. They interpreted the aspects of good verses evil to be synonymous with the aspects of meaning verses meaninglessness. Instead of a duality stating that one has to exist in conflict with the other, Transcendentalists believe that one is the absence of the other. A Transcendentalist would interpret evil to be the absence of good, the same way meaninglessness is interpreted to be the absence of meaning. This ability to find meaning is innate to all people and to all things; therefore the ability for good is also innate to all people and to all things; and evil, by itself, does not exist.
Credit for the term Transcendentalism was given to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In fact, what is known as American Transcendentalism is in part a collection and refinement of numerous European ideas in addition to American thought and innovation. From American Democracy and Unitarianism came the idea of individual power and importance. From the German writers: Fichte and Herder and from the Swedish mystic Swendenborg came its mystic qualities; from German Romantic poets: Goethe, Novalis, Jean-Paul, and Heine came its propensity towards imagistic themes and language; and from the English Romantics: Coleridge, Carlyle, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron came German thought filtered through English ideals; and from Plato and other Neo-Platonic writers came the idea of nature as a symbolic living mystery. Transcendental ideas also received inspiration from Asian texts such as the writings of: Confucius, the Vishnu Purina, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad-Gita.
Transcendentalism as an official movement ended during the late 1850's. Increasing industrialization hindered the momentum Transcendentalism had started. Transcendentalist ideas on inner spirituality and nature gave way to industrial ideas of mechanical process. In spite of this change, many recent movements have roots in Transcendentalist thought, and works done by Transcendentalist writers are still read and studied today.
Transcendentalist Authors:
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