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What is Transcendentalism?

#51: July - Aug. 2008 (Non-Fiction)
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Thomas Hood
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What is Transcendentalism?

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"Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

Not at all. Contrary to notions promulgated in numerous, authorative webpages, the Transcendentalism practiced by Thoreau had nothing to do with Kant, Unitarianism, or Harvard Divinity School.

Thoreau was part of the Romantic Movement -- the philosophy going back to Montaigne and Thomas Browne, both of whom he read, that focused on the uniqueness and importance of the individual. In the wilderness of mass man -- mass movements, mass culture, and political and economic collectivism -- how could an individual exist? How could individual genius find freedom in an unfree world? Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe reached the same conclusion at about the same time: The self could be both protected and affirmed by concealed disclosure. For the use of concealed disclosure in Hawthorne and Melville, see

http://www.geocities.com/seekingthephoenix/h/aeneid.htm
Hawthorne and Melville by Thomas St. John

Thoreau was the optimist in the lot, and for him I'll give three examples of concealed disclosure.

An individual is created, or at least modified, by life experiences which give an emotional charge to future experience. Subtle objective features of things that suggest the original charging experience evoke a subjective, charged emotional atmosphere and unite subjective and objective.

1.

Consider this sentence from the second paragraph of Walden: "Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students." Thoreau was a charity case at Harvard, an outsider and a loner. The Thoreaus were so poor that a women's charity offered to make shirts for him. Harvard's dress code required a black coat. Unlike every other student at Harvard (so far as I know) because of Thoreau's poverty -- the family could not afford to buy him a black coat -- Thoreau was given an exemption and wore a green coat.

2.

1.9 "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats."

1.89 "The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free."

The muskrat was Thoreau's totem animal, the creature with whom he most closely identified. As the muskrat (Thoreau perferred the Indian name 'mushquash') built his house of sticks of his own gathering, so Thoreau built his house at Walden. In reading 1.89 the reader needs to know this bit of charging, biographical information: At the age of 4 Thoreau accidently chopped off his right big toe.

3.

1.33 ". . .often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore. . . ."

The reader needs to know the charging event to which this apparently objective observation alludes: In July, 1850, Emerson sent Thoreau to Fire Island (parallels Long Island) to recover the remains (shark-bitten body parts, manuscripts, . . . ) of their friend Margaret Fuller.

Tom
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Reader's Digest Version

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Tom makes some excellent points about the Transcendentalists. They can be seen as a complex force: not quite a religion, a philosophy, or a literary style, yet embodying aspects seen in all three. Falling under the umbrella of Romanticism, they have many tenants, but for those new to the Transcendentalists (who were also part of the Transcendental Club that met at Emerson's house) it might be nice to look at some of the big categories that their ideals fall under. As I said, the Transcendentalists are not as simplistic as I am making them, but this is a user-friendly starting point. When we teach the Transcendentalists, we have the students start with these four ideals:

* Intuition
* Individualism
* Nature
* The Over-Soul

Since there was a prevalent feeling in Transcendentalism that man was created good, it made sense that they would say that Intuition was key. You should follow they individual voice inside of you, that was put in you at creation to lead you down the path to be the perfect "you". This of course goes hand-in-hand with individuality, which is not just being different as some students think, but in essence being yourself, defined by your intuition instead of defined by conforming to or opposing some other standard. Through our reliance (...think Emerson's idea of Self-reliance) and belief in our intuition we can achieve our individual successes. As Thoreau tells us in his conclusion:
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
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Re: Reader's Digest Version

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BabyBlues wrote:. . . the Transcendentalists (who were also part of the Transcendental Club that met at Emerson's house). . .
Tracey, thanks for an informed response.

The Hedge Club: Hedge, Ripley, Brownson, Very, Fuller, Peabody. Alcott, Parker, Cranch, Dwight, Thoreau, Emerson.
When we teach the Transcendentalists, we have the students start with these four ideals:

* Intuition
* Individualism
* Nature
* The Over-Soul

Since there was a prevalent feeling in Transcendentalism that man was created good, it made sense that they would say that Intuition was key. You should follow they individual voice inside of you, that was put in you at creation to lead you down the path to be the perfect "you". This of course goes hand-in-hand with individuality, which is not just being different as some students think, but in essence being yourself, defined by your intuition instead of defined by conforming to or opposing some other standard. Through our reliance (...think Emerson's idea of Self-reliance) and belief in our intuition we can achieve our individual successes. As Thoreau tells us in his conclusion:
Yes, this is very good, but it doesn't indicate the special technique that Thoreau employed in Walden to resolve the enigma of inner and outer, how it is possible for the inner self to get out into the real world. My opinion is that none of them understood what Thoreau was doing, and failure to understand was the reason for the falling out between Emerson and Thoreau -- a friend is supposed to understand you, and Emerson didn't.

Thoreau was not trapped in mentalism, as the Transcendentalists generally were. His Transcendental features of experience were hard objective features that anyone could see if they paid attention in the right way -- the bloody leg of a muskrat, the waterlogged spoils of a shipwreck.

Also, I don't teach. If I did I'd be sure my students knew the conventional scholarly line.

Tom
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Walking the Walk

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Thoreau was not trapped in mentalism, as the Transcendentalists generally were. His Transcendental features of experience were hard objective features that anyone could see if they paid attention in the right way -- the bloody leg of a muskrat, the waterlogged spoils of a shipwreck.
Tom,
That is a great way to word it. I often express to high schoolers that Emerson, who most consider te Father of Transcendentalism, pioneered much of the thought while Thoreau tried to live the life. Very similar to your point...
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Tom, BB
You seem to imply that Thoreau presents an objective transcendentalism. And yet he is deeply subjective in his perspective. This objective-subjective tension comes through in his attitude to commerce, where he seems to argue commerce is objectively bad, even though for all to live as he does is simply not possible. Thoreau presents a romantic back to nature ideal that is highly alluring for the desperate sadness of industrial life.

To pun on the comment that T was not trapped in mentalism, we could ask if this ideal he presents is 'mental' or 'dental'? If he is indeed 'trapped in mentalism', this leaves open the problem of what a transcendental philosophy might be. In this regard it is not so simple to separate Thoreau from the philosophical context, eg Kant. It is magnificent that the wild frontier was close enough to permit Thoreau to give free rein to his transcendental imagination, but I still feel in reading him that he is capturing a vanishing possibility, the potential harmony of American civilisation with nature. This romantic poetic idea is something that I think has to reconcile with commerce, not just oppose it.

Robert

PS - From reading Your Inner Fish I can't help thinking of ostracoderms in the pun on transcendental - their toothy skulls from half a billion years ago are objectively transcendental.
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Re: What is Transcendentalism?

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Thomas Hood wrote: Not at all. Contrary to notions promulgated in numerous, authorative webpages, the Transcendentalism practiced by Thoreau had nothing to do with Kant, Unitarianism, or Harvard Divinity School.

Tom
Copied from the VCU site:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, its leading exponent, described both this shift and the derivation of the movement's name thus: "It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism of the present day acquired the name of Transcendental, from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant (my bold), of Konigsberg, who replied to the skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas, or imperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendental forms." [from "The Transcendentalist"] Transcendentalism, then, is not as much concerned with a metaphysics that transcends our daily lives but rather with a new view of the mind that replaces Locke's empiricist, materialistic, and passive model with one emphasizing the role of the mind itself in actively shaping experience.
It seems to me that Kant must have had something to do with Thoreau's Transcendentalism.
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Robert Tulip wrote:. . . You seem to imply that Thoreau presents an objective transcendentalism.


Yes, Robert, as objective as Pavlov.

The young son of a psychologist dangerously insisted on playing with scissors. The psychologist connected the scissors to an electrical source. The child touched and was shocked (a charging event :) ). The child became scissor phobic. However, he also became phobic to everything bright and shiny, including silverware, which he refused to use. More work for papa. The silverware had acquired Transcendental features. That is, through stimulus generalization a slight resemblance united the subjective (phobic response) and the objective (bright, shiny).

An inattentive man steps into the street and is almost hit by a delivery truck. Later, he takes the subway to work and feels overwhelmed by fear. Next day when he approaches the subway the fear is overpowering and he is unable to go to work. The sound of the braking subway cars resembles the sound of the delivery truck slamming on brakes.

For baby and adult like us, such subtle Transcendental features of experience control how we evaluated the world. Kant didn't have a clue. Such interpretation is annoying to mentalists who insists that the subway is a sex symbol and that the man really wants to kill his father and have sex with his mother :)
To pun on the comment that T was not trapped in mentalism, we could ask if this ideal he presents is 'mental' or 'dental'?

Robert, have you spent some time at Walden? Here it is: "What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? [Ezekiel 18:2]" (1.46). Tran-sin-dentalism, moral evolution. Puns are important as an effort to return to original experience.

It is magnificent that the wild frontier was close enough to permit Thoreau to give free rein to his transcendental imagination, . . . .

Please, Robert, Walden was no more wild frontier than the woods in back of my house. Free rein to his transcendental imagination my foot. Walden may be the most heavily and consciously edited book every written -- seven versions, I'm told. Give the guy some credit.

Tom
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Re: What is Transcendentalism?

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Saffron wrote:It seems to me that Kant must have had something to do with Thoreau's Transcendentalism.
It seems so to many scholars. They wouldn't think so IMO if they stopped talking to each other and paid attention to Walden.

"If Thoreau is "the American heir to Kant's critical philosophy," as he has been called (Oelschlaeger 1991, 136), it is because his investigation of "the relation between the subject of knowledge and its object" builds upon a Kantian insight . . . ."
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/


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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Henry_Hedge

In my opinion the imaginary Kant connection is a red herring. My evidence is that Hawthorne and Melville had themes and techniques similar to Thoreau's, and nobody suggests that their achievements depended on Kant.

Tom
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:offtopic:
Why is Melville's name brought up so much? I really thought Moby Dick was torturous. Was he really a good author? It seems like many people think so.
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Thomas Hood wrote:
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.
Have a look at the following article. It includes the notes with sitations from Emerson's journals as to dates he read essays about Kant. You can find it at:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/361129



* Emerson and German Philosophy
* Rene Wellek
* The New England Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1943), pp. 41-62 (article consists of 22 pages)
* Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc.
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