Installment 1
Section # 9
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophy that developed in the early 1800's. It is a Western Philosophy founded in New England by American thinkers. These thinkers, or philosophers, strove to discover and understand the world beyond which we can feel with our five senses. The goal is to "transcend" beyond the observable universe. Individuals who adapted this kind of thinking did not view it as a religious belief system. They wanted to understand life and its relationship to all other things, including humans as well as other living organisms. They studied how humans connected with the Earth, themselves, animals, and other human beings. Unlike other philosophies that were becoming more profound during this time and during the breakaway from religion, transcendentalism was about intuition and imagination; feelings opposed to logic and reason. Although this philosophy attempted to transcend beyond critical thinking, it was not an organized religion in any sense. Understanding spirituality was something that most transcendentalists struggled with. Transcendentalists criticized organized religion as well as government, laws, social institutions, and the rapid growth of industrialization. Some world renowned transcendentalists were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau.
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