Transcendentalism

Causes

• Rationalism – a belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based

on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional

response

• Romanticism – movement in the arts and

literature emphasizing inspiration,

subjectivity, and the primacy of the

individual

Transcendentalism

• a philosophy emphasizing that people should transcend,

or go beyond, logical thinking to reach true

understanding, with the help of emotions and intuition

Transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that every human being has

unlimited potential, but to realize their godlike nature, people have

to transcend, or go beyond, purely logical thinking. They can find

the answers to life's mysteries only by learning to trust their

emotions and intuition.

• “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he

hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears.”

- Henry David Thoreau

When I heard the learn’d astronomer

Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Civil Disobedience

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gugnXTN6-D4

Consequences

• Inspired reform movements in the 1800s

• Prison reform

• Education reform

• Abolitionist movement

• Women’s rights movement

Long Lasting Influence

• Influenced later reform movements

• Mahatma Gandhi – led India’s independence from British Rule (1947)

• American Civil Rights movement

“During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience for the

first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice

of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made

my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance.”

- The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Assignment

• Choose an issue today that you care about (explain the issue in at least 3 sentences)

• What are some ways that Thoreau would approve of to address the issue?

• What are some ways of responding to that issue that Thoreau would condemn?

Write at minimum of 3 sentences for each question. You may use the computer to research issues and ways people respond to them.

There is an assignment in Teams that you can write the answers to these questions in.