1. American Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a form of idealism that encompasses belief in intuitive knowledge, the indwelling of divinity in man and nature.
The coming in of Spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
---Henry D. Thoreau

2. Spring

3. A noisy silence

4. A lake that can calm our troubled souls.

5. Nothing is everything, nature says.

6. The world is on fire.

7. Is it beautiful or ugly?

8. American Transcendentalism
1. The first American intellectual movement to inspire a number of literary classics ( in Europe, it was a philosophy)
2. It stresses the unity of being---viewing God, man and nature as sharers in a universal soul-----Oversoul
3. It is a kind of idealism and romanticism

9. Puritanism ( New Adam and Eve) Man is fallen and can be saved by God
( Hard working, plain living and high thinking)
The economic boom Spiritual liberation
Transcendentalism
( New being with God
and nature)
Man and God and Eden

10. We cannot understand the
America of the nineteenth
century without coming
to terms with Ralph Waldo
Emerson

11. American Transcendentalism
Leading transcendentalists ( reformers + idealists )
1. Ralph Waldo Emerson-- the leader
2. Henry David Thoreau-- the doer
3. Elizabeth Peabody-- children-kindergarten
4. Margaret Fuller-- women’s rights
5. Bronson Alcott— adult education and labor
movement

12. Emerson Thoreau Fuller
B. Alcott
E. Peabody

13. Who are they? 1. The young men and women under 35 from the Boston area
2. Genteel and well-educated, Harvard graduates
3. Unitarian Church 唯一神教派
4. Teachers, lecturers, journalists and writers

14. What do they believe? God Nature Man Oversoul 天地与我共生,万物与我为一. ---庄子
I become a transparent eyeball;I am nothing;I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part or parcel of God.
---Emerson
Oversoul
God
Nature
Man
天地与我共生,万物与我为一 庄子

15. What do they do?
1. Talk and discuss---intellectual companionship and interests ( Brook Farm)
2. Work---living closer to nature and dignity of manual labor ( Thoreau)
3. Believe---human rights are divine in their right
4. Write---The Dial ( )
5. Reform---human rights, women’s rights
social changes

16. Where does Transcendentalism come from?
Philosophy + religion + culture
1. German idealism: Kant 康德
2. Goethe
3. English literature: Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlye)
4. Plato
5. Oriental literature ( The Sayings of Confucius )
6. Quakerism (教友派)
7. Deism (自然神论)
The American frontier spirit ( optimism, individualism)

17. Brook Farm

18. Walden lake

19. Emerson’s grave stone

20. This is the place where Henry Thoreau lived alone for two years
and two months

21. One of the greatest American thinkers lies buried here.

22. This is the teaching of God and nature, as transcendentalists
believed