Presentation by Andreas Schleicher Tackling the School Absenteeism Crisis 30 ...
Transendecialism
1. Transcendentali
smEmerson,
Ralph Waldo
Henry David Thoreau
&
An Introduction to
Transcendentalism
2. Ralph Waldo
• Emerson
Born May 25, 1803 in Boston
• Educated at Harvard
• Was a pastor until wife’s death in 1831;
resigned in 1832 with questions about the Church
• Travels to Europe, England, meets Romantic
poets including Wordsworth and Coleridge
• Publishes Nature in 1836…thought of as the beginning
of the Transcendentalist movement—the first real
American literary movement
• 1841: “Self-Reliance”
• Loses son to scarlet fever in 1842; work becomes
increasingly jaded
• Lives until 1882
3. Henry David
• July 12, 1817 Thoreau
Born David Henry Thoreau in
Concord, Mass
• 1821
The family (including siblings Helen,
John, Jr., and Sophia) moves to
Boston
• 1837
Graduates from Harvard
Accepts a job as a school teacher in
Concord (Is fired after 2 weeks for
refusing to beat a child) (Divine,
• 1838-1841 327)
Heads a private school in Concord
with his elder brother, John
4. Henry David
Thoreau
• 1841-1843
Lives with Ralph Waldo
Emerson and his family in
Concord
• 1842
John dies suddenly of lockjaw
(Contracted by cutting his ring
finger with a razor)
• 1845-1847
Lives in small house he builds
for himself on Walden Pond
• 1846
Mexican War begins (Thoreau
spends a night in jail for
refusing to pay a poll tax)
5. Henry David
• 1848 Thoreau
Begins career as a professional
lecturer
• 1849
Publishes “Civil Disobedience”
• 1854
Publishes Walden; or, Life in the
Woods
• 1862
Dies in Concord, Mass
6. In His Own Words
• Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out
of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply
good; be good for something.
• Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!
Live the life you've imagined.
• Men have become the tools of their tools.
• Under a government which imprisons any
unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
• What is the use of a house if you haven't got a
tolerable planet to put it on?
7. In His Own Words
• I say beware of all enterprises that require new
clothes.
• What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are
tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
• All good things are wild, and free.
• I have always been regretting that I was not as
wise as the day I was born.
• I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after
my own fashion.
• Most people dread finding out when they come
to die that they have never really lived.
8. Transcendentalism
• Basic Assumption:
The intuitive faculty, instead of the rational or sense-
based, became the means for a conscious union of the
individual psyche with the world psyche also known as
the Oversoul, Life-Force, Prime Mover, or God.
In other words: The basic truths of the universe lie
beyond what we can obtain from our senses
• Senses get us facts and laws, we can reason to book
knowledge and technology, but there is more to the
world
• Transcendentalism is not a religion, a philosophy,
or a literary theory…but it has components of each
9. Transcendentalism
• Major Tenets:
1. An individual is the spiritual center of the universe
Emerson: Intuition is “the highest power of the Soul”
1. The structure of the universe literally duplicates the
structure of the individual self, therefore all knowledge
begins with self-knowledge
3. Nature is a living mystery, full of signs; Nature is
Symbolic (God, humanity, and nature are all connected)
4. Individual Virtue & Happiness Depend Upon Self-
Realization
• Requires the reconciliation of 2 things:
The Expansive or Self-Transcending Tendency
The Contracting or Self-Asserting Tendency
10. Two Tendencies
• The Expansive or Self-Transcending
Tendency
The Desire to Embrace the World – To Know
and Become One with the World
• The Contracting or Self-Asserting
Tendency
The Desire to Withdraw, to remain Unique &
Separate – The Egotistical Existence
12. Anti-
•
Transcendentalists
Connected with high class, good taste, distinguished
achievement, Boston/Harvard
• Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville
appreciated power of transcendental ideals, but argued
critically against them
Saw much in nature that was not good and godlike…saw
gap between desire and possibility, the blending of good
and evil in even the highest human motives
found in humanity a strange mixture of will and desire, an
“uneven balance” opposed to transcendentalist optimism
Melville: Seeks “the intense feeling of usable truth”: “By
usable truth, we mean the absolute condition of present
things as they strike the eye of the man who fears them not”
14. The Government
• “Government is best which governs least” (1)
• Men as machines (2-3)
• The Individual’s Duty (6-11)
To Break the Law: “If a law requires you to be the
agent of injustice to another, then I say break the
law” (8)
To Withdraw from Society (8-11)
• Majority of one (8)
• Rich Men vs. Poor Men (money v. virtue) (10)
“Cast your whole vote” (9)