Spirituality – Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement that developed during the late 1820s and ’30s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of spirituality and, in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School.

Among the transcendentalists’ core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They believe that society and its institutions – particularly organized religion and political parties – ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly “self-reliant” and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.

History

Origins

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston at the early nineteenth century. It started to develop in the aftermath of Unitarianism taking hold at Harvard University, following the elections of Henry Ware Sr. as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805, and of John Thorton Kirkland as President in 1810. Rather than as a rejection of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism evolved as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. They were not, however, content with the sobriety, mildness and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience. Stated in alternate terms, Transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but, as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians.

Emerson’s Nature

The publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay Nature is usually considered the moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Emerson wrote in his 1837 speech “The American Scholar”: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds… A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” Emerson closed the essay by calling for a revolution in human consciousness to emerge from the brand new idealist philosophy:

• So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, – What is truth? and of the affections, – What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. …Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

Transcendental Club

In the same year, transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals including George Putnam (1807-78; the Unitarian minister in Roxbury), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge. From 1840, the group published frequently in their journal The Dial, along with other venues.

Second Wave of Transcendentalists

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. “All that can be said”, Emerson wrote, “is that she represents an interesting hour and group in American cultivation”. There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists, including Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Samuel Longfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn – Notably, the transgression of the spirit, most often evoked by the poet’s prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader a sense of purposefulness. This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papers – all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression. Though the group was mostly made up of struggling aesthetes, the wealthiest among them was Samuel Gray Ward, who, after a few contributions to The Dial, focused on his banking career.

Luc Paquin