Transcendenatalism

1. Transcendenatalism Nayeli ArceCynthia Orozco

2. OVERVIEW • Transcendentalism: Also called transcendental philosophy. any philosophy based upon the doctrine that the principles of reality are to be discovered by the study of the processes of thought, or a philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical: in the U.S., associated with Emerson. • Was developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the Eastern region of the United States.Core beliefs were the inherent goodness of both people and nature. • Believed that society and its institutions ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. • The major figures in the movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Margaret Fuller and Amos Bronson Alcott. • It developed as a reaction against 18th Century rationalism, John Locke's philosophy of Sensualism, and the predestinationism of New England Calvinism. • “Transcendentalism was in many aspects the first notable American intellectual movement.”

3. Authors & Books • * Ralph Waldo Emerson - author, leading exponent of Transcendentalist • * Henry David Thoreau - poet, essayist, abolitionist • * Walt Whitman - American poet (Leaves of Grass, etc.) • * Nathaniel Hawthorne - immensely influential 19th-century • * Herman Melville - influential novelist • * Amos Bronson Alcott - noted teacher, author and Utopian; founder of the Fruitlands; father of children's author Louisa May Alcott • * Orestes Brownson - (1803-1876) New England intellectual, activist; best known for his affiliation with the New England Transcendentalist • * George Putnam - Unitarian minister who was co-founder of the famous Transcendental Club * Herman Melville is the author of Moby-Dick