During the late 1800s and early 1900s, a new era was developing in American
society. The United States was an idealistic nation with separate beliefs and
lifestyles. One of the most intriguing lifestyles introduced during this time
was transcendentalism. Many authors, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathanial
Hawthorne, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, developed this idea and tried
to make people understand the meaning behind this new way of lfe. Through his
extensive writings of books, essays and poetry, Thoreau gave the American public
a deep insight to the new world of transcendentalism. While he was growing up,
Thoreau rarely left his birth town of Concord. He felt that man didn’t need
wider horizons in order to write efficiently (Hoff, 31). He wrote his private
thoughts in journals to help him write lectures and books, and never wrote or
spoke about what he himself had not experienced (Hoff, 32). Thoreau attened
Harvard, but believed that he had not really learned anything of worth while
there(Hoff, 34). This is surprising because most people think of Thoreau as an
intellectual, who most definitely had a sound education that he appreciated.
Thoreau was a “skilled naturalist (Whitman, 802)” who was extremely
knowledgable about weather, geology, flora and fauna. He was known to be quite
friendly with birds and other such animals. He was a self-proclaimed mystic,
transcendentalist and natural philosopher. (Whitman, 802). The first person to
use the word “transcendental” was German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He used
the term “transcendental philosophy” to describe the study of pure mind and
its forms. The word “transcendentalism” is defined as the “belief or
doctrine asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends
the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition (Koster, 1).”
It is also known as, in philosophy and literature, “the belief in a higher
reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge
than that achieved by human reason (Encarta).” This idea originated with the
Greek philosopher, Plato, who had recognized the existence of absolute
righteousness. American transcendentalism began with the formation of the
Transcendental Club in Boston in 1836. The leaders of this movement included
essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, feminist and social reformer Margaret Fuller,
minister Theodore Parker, teacher Bronson Alcott, philosopher William Ellery
Channing, and Thoreau. This club published a magazine, The Dial, and some
members performed an experiment of communal living at Brook Farm in
Massachusetts during the 1840s. The American roots of transcendentalism began in
New England with Puritanism. This was the idea that transcendentalists were
direct descendents of people that fled to this region in search of religious
freedom. Another major influence of the transcendental movement was platonism.
This ideal held the supreme god as being primary, with all other things derived
from it. Romanticism also played an important role in the development of this
new era. It was: The delight in, and wonder at, the beauty and beneficience of
nature, the recognition of the individual human being as being superior to
society, the concomitant objection to social restraints upon the individual,
and, above all, the ascendency of emotion and intuitive perception over reason (Koster,
8). It also involved the celebration of individualism and self-examination.
Another factor was that of Orientalism. Many people believed that American
interest in the Orient began as a purely economic interest, but then moved on to
other things such as spirituality and morality. Religious philosophers that
appeared later applied Plato’s idea of transcendentalism to the fact that God
could not be described nor understood through the voice of human experience
(Encarta). The Scholastics recognized six transcendental concepts: essence,
unity, goodness, truth, thing and something. The terms transcendent and
transcendental were used in a more narrow and technical sense by Scholastic
philosophers late in the Middle Ages to signify concepts of unrestricted
generality applying to all types of things (Encarta).

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