Transcendentalists

** Henry David Thoreau www.transcendentalists.com**

American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). It began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church, extending the views of William Ellery Channing on an indwelling God and the significance of intuitive thought. It was based on "a monism holding to the unity of the world and God, and the immanence of God in the world" (//Oxford Companion to American Literature// 770). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. [|Transcendentalists]

The Transcendentalists desired to ground their religion and philosophy in transcendental principles: principles not based on, or falsifiable by, sensuous experience, but deriving from the inner, spiritual or mental essence of the human. Immanuel Kant had called "all knowledge transcendental which is concerned not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects." The Transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with [|German philosophy] in the original, and relied primarily on the writings of [|Thomas Carlyle], [|Samuel Taylor Coleridge], [|Victor Cousin], [|Germaine de Staël], and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it. In contrast, they were intimately familiar with the English [|Romantics], and the Transcendental movement may be partially described as a slightly later, American outgrowth of Romanticism. Another major influence was the mystical spiritualism of [|Emanuel Swedenborg].

"Who are we?" They think that everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul. They believed in human perfectibility and they worked to achieve this goal. A generation of people who are struggling to define spirituality and religion in a way that takes into account the new understandings of the age made available.**Transcendentalism** was a group of new ideas in [|literature], [|religion], [|culture], and [|philosophy] that emerged in [|New England] in the early to middle 19th century. It is sometimes called **American Transcendentalism** to distinguish it from other uses of the word __[|transcendental] .__
 * A model of the world**

The Transcendentalists can be understood in one sense by their context -- by what they were rebelling against, what they saw as the current situation and therefore as what they were trying to be different from.([|http://www.transcendentalists.com/what.htm)

Transcendentalists

"Why is the world the way it is? Where does it all come from? Where do we come from?" They believed that God revealed himself to people through the bible and the physical world. They also believed that the physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world. Transcendentalists believe that you should have your own outlook on life and see situations in your view to a certain extent.
 * Explanation**

We are going to, "an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual's intuition." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism
 * Futurology**

They believe in imagination. They say you should dare to dream. They believe that self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition. They also believe that intuition matters more than rational thought.
 * Values**

"How should we act?" - morality, application of values, and godly so that we may acihive goals "What is true and what is false?" - how do we know? They believed that all people had access to divine inspiration and sought and loved freedom and knowledge and truth. "We do not know what God is. God himself doesn't know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism#Transcendental_theology
 * Action**
 * Knowledge**

[|Wikipedia Entry]

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