Saffron, reading essays about Kant isn't reading Kant. Using some of Kant's terminology isn't understanding Kant. To quote myself:
I know of no evidence that either Emerson or Thoreau read German philosophy. Frederick Henry Hedge was the German philosophy expert in the group, and from the little I have read of him, he is neither inspiring nor clear.
I do not have access to jstor, but here are some publically accessible links:
Emerson and Immanuel Kant
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendenta ... -kant.html
"Though his knowledge of Kant, Fichte and Schelling was primarily second-hand, this does not minimize its importance. It was, true, translated through a medium, and thus diluted, and altered subtly from its original form. Emerson did, true, alter it somewhat to coincide with his own primal urges and native influences. Yet without the seed that traveled across the water from Germany, the germination of American Transcendentalism would not have been."
This is untrue as the work of Hawthorne and Melville shows.
The Scarlet Letter deals extensively with the relation of subjective and objective without any debt to Kant. Kant IMO is a status symbol of no practical importance for the study of Walden. Maybe Robert has read the Critique of Pure Reason, but I doubt
any Thoreau scholar has.
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendenta ... ridge.html
"Coleridge"
Frederic Henry Hedge
The Christian Examiner, March 1833
Coleridge, according to Hedge, failed to explain German metaphysics. I found Hedge's description of the transcendental effect hilarious:
"As in astronomy the motions of the heavenly bodies seem confused to the geocentric observer, and are intelligible only when referred to their heliocentric place, so there is only one point from which we can clearly understand and decide upon the speculations of Kant and his followers; that point is the interior consciousness, distinguished from the common consciousness, by its being an active and not a passive state. In the language of the school, it is a free intuition, and can only be attained by a vigorous effort of the will. It is from an ignorance of this primary condition, that the writings of these men have been denounced as vague and mystical. Viewing them from the distance [as] we do, their discussion seem to us like objects half enveloped in mist; the little we can distinguish seems most portentously magnified and distorted by the unnatural refraction through which we behold it, and the point where they touch the earth is altogether lost. The effect of such writing upon the uninitiated, is like being in the company of one who has inhaled an exhilarating [laughing] gas. We witness the inspiration, and are astounded at the effects, but we can form no conception of the feeling until we ourselves have experienced it. To those who are without the veil, then, any expose of transcendental views must needs be unsatisfactory."
Tom