December 18, 2024 • 11 mins
Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement in the 1800s that has had lasting effects in American society. Learn how it worked in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/transcendentalism.htm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Volbebam here. Today, a lot of Americans feel strongly about
issues such as racial justice, women's rights, and protecting the environment,
and many believe in the power of nonviolent civil disobedience
to achieve progress towards a better fairer world. And while
(00:26):
not all of us realize it, in many ways, we
take after a group of mid nineteenth century New England
intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Throw and
Margaret Fuller, among others, who espoused philosophy known as transcendentalism.
The Transcendentalist movement, which emerged in the mid eighteen thirties,
(00:47):
had a straightforward idea at its core. Adherents argued that
every person possesses the light of capital d divine truth,
then should look within themselves defined it, rather than simply
conform to whatever the powers that be want them to think.
But from that notion of spiritual self reliance, a lot
(01:08):
of other ideas blossomed, from reverence for nature to the
view that everyone is entitled freedom and equality. That led
Transcendentalists to become an important part of other activist movements
in America at the time that sought to abolish slavery
and achieve women's suffrage. For example, it was inspired in
(01:28):
part by thinkers on the other side of the Atlantic.
The actual name of the movement, Transcendental, came from German
philosopher Emmanuel Kant's seventeen eighty eight manuscript Critique of Practical Reason.
Emerson was a great admirer of English Romantic writers William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both of whom he met
when he traveled to Europe, and Frederick Henry Hedge, a
(01:52):
Unitarian minister who studied in Germany, brought German philosophy back
to America with him, along with a number of other
interested writers, politicians, and thinkers at large. They began meeting
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in eighteen thirty six. Before the article
this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke via
email with Laura Dasso Walls, the William P. And Hazel B. White,
(02:15):
professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and
author of the acclaimed twenty seventeen biography Henry David Threaux
A life, as she said, all through the war years,
the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the War of eighteen twelve,
Americans found it virtually impossible to go to Europe or
even to access European books. But after the peace Treaty
(02:38):
of eighteen fifteen, suddenly traveled to Europe was wide open again.
A whole generation of ambitious young American men sailed to
Europe to continue their education at European universities, above all
in Germany. The books and ideas and teachings they brought
with them Kant Girder, the Humboldt Brothers, Samuel Taylor, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Byron and Shelley, and Don and on in used American
(03:00):
colleges and universities with an exciting new wave of European
literature and philosophy. It was a wave which swiftly spread
into the popular imagination, inspiring a widespread confidence that a
new age was born, an age in which the individual
could intuit truth for him or herself by an inward
search for meaning. Yet, a year after the group first met,
(03:24):
Emerson urged in his speech and later essay The American Scholar,
for Americans to stop looking to Europe for inspiration and imitation,
and to be themselves. Walls said, Transcendentalism became the first
distinctly American philosophy because it fused several different currents, all
of which converged only here in the US. So even
(03:46):
though the underlying philosophy first emerged in Europe, it was
in America that it took hold as a philosophy one
could actually commit to and live by. A One of
Transcendentalism's key influences was the religious faith of New England's Puritans,
who believed that every person stands before God and must
read the Bible for themselves, a Wall said, this gave
(04:09):
us the bedrock notion of individualism. Another important ingredient was
the American Revolution, which promoted a quality as an American ideal,
even if the new country didn't actually afford that status
to a lot of its people, including women, most people
of color, and the formerly enslaved a. Walls said. The Transcendentalists,
(04:30):
whose parents had grown up fighting the Revolution, believed it
was their turn to continue the revolution, that is, to
continue the political revolution by igniting it as an intellectual revolution.
Their small group became known as the Transcendental Club. They
eventually published a magazine, The Dial, which was edited by
(04:51):
Margaret Fuller. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was the business manager of
the magazine, and in eighteen sixty established the first English
language kindergar in the US. Later, some of the Transcendentalists
even created a short lived utopian community near Boston based
on their ideas, a brook farm whose residents shared the
agricultural work and operated a school. While the Transcendentalists were
(05:17):
a rebellious fringe, a lot of their ideas eventually became
an accepted part of the American mainstream. O. Walls explained,
as Emerson said, in self trust, all the virtues are comprehended.
This notion of self trust became the foundation for American
self reliance, another term coined by Emerson. Henry David Threaux,
(05:41):
a former schoolmaster turned poet and philosopher, bought into Transcendentalist
philosophical ideas and endeavored to live them. In eighteen forty five,
he built a cottage on Walden Pond on property owned
by Emerson, and spent several years living off the land,
meditating and contemplating nature. In eighteen forty six, Thereau stopped
(06:03):
paying taxes in protest against slavery and the US War
against Mexico. He was arrested by the local constable for
tax delinquency and spent a night in jail before a
benefactor paid off his debt. The experience led the Roe
to publish his influential essay Civil Disobedience, in which he
argued that people should defy the government rather than support
(06:23):
policies they saw as unjust. Thereau advocated nonviolent action, but
later penned a letter in support of the violent actions
of John Brown, who murdered unarmed pro slavery settlers in Kansas.
Owall said, Thereau gave us the classic examples a first
in his uniquely individualist form of social protest and civil disobedience,
(06:46):
and then in pursuing his utopian search for truth by
living in solitude at Walden Pond, a striking out alone
to enjoy an original relation to the universe. As Emerson said,
this original relation included the universe of human history, but
world literature, the world's religions, modern science, philosophy, all the
way back to the ancient Greeks play too. Above all,
(07:08):
but also famously the universe of the outer world or nature,
which the Transcendentalists regarded as the embodiment of divine reason,
hence the key to universal meaning. According to Walls, the
Transcendentalists quote interpreted truth not as something that one could
find single and static, but as something one lived, dynamic
(07:31):
and always evolving and changing. That unending search for the
truth also led the movement's members to become activists in
big causes of their day. The Transcendentalist belief that every
person carries God within themselves meant that politics, economics, organized religion,
and schools, all with tendencies to sort people into hierarchical ranks,
(07:54):
needed to be reformed or even overhauled. A Wall said
the American educational system was their first target. Education should
be free to all of all ages, men and women alike,
and all ethnicities, races, and creeds. Many of the Transcendentalists
were teachers, and several Bronze and Alcott, Elizabeth Peabody, and
thereaux A founded innovative progressive schools which embraced literacy and
(08:18):
education for everyone, including women and African Americans. Transcendentalists also
took up the fight against slavery. Walls said it was
led notably by women who took up the cause starting
in the eighteen thirties by founding anti slavery societies at
the local level and organizing anti slavery activism at all levels, local, regional,
(08:39):
and national. Some members acted as conductors on the Underground Railroad,
and a minister in the group, One Theodore Parker, not
only preached abolitionist sermons, but formed a vigilance committee to
protect free black people in Boston from Southerners there to
catch freedom seekers and Dentalists were also early advocates for
(09:02):
women's rights. Margaret Fuller's eighteen forty five book Woman in
the Nineteenth Century contained what was for the time a
daring proclamation quote what woman needs is not as a
woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow,
as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live
freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given
(09:23):
her when we left our common home a. Fuller's influence
was felt three years later at the Seneca Falls Convention,
the conference that's widely recognized as the beginning of the
women's rights movement. The Transcendentalist movement eventually began to fade,
but its ideas never really went away and manifested into
(09:43):
later reform movements in the nineteen sixties and seventies, for example,
there was a resurgence of enthusiasm for throw as antiwar
activists found his ideas about resisting the power structure were
highly relevant today. Climate activists argue that environmental PreTect action
and social justice for poor people and minority communities aren't
separate issues, but are actually inseparably linked. Another transcendentalist idea,
(10:10):
Wall said, interest in the Roe's ideas is stronger today
than ever before. Certainly, students in my own classes resonate
to his message more urgently than ever. They identify with
the Roe's fear that we're living lies of quiet desperation,
and many respond with intense hope to the solutions he offers.
For one reason, his is an individualist form of hope.
(10:32):
You can take on his ethical project by yourself, on
your own, no matter who you are or where you live.
In other words, he offers a sense that even today,
we can exert at least some control over our lives,
learn to live by a higher ethical standard, and so
at the least make our own lives better. A place
to start the ethical project of making all lives better.
(10:59):
Today's episode is based on the article what is Transcendentalism
and how did it change America? On HowStuffWorks dot Com
written by Patrick J. Kiger. Rain Stuff is production of
by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and
is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts myheart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Volbebam here. Today, a lot of Americans feel strongly about
issues such as racial justice, women's rights, and protecting the environment,
and many believe in the power of nonviolent civil disobedience
to achieve progress towards a better fairer world. And while
(00:26):
not all of us realize it, in many ways, we
take after a group of mid nineteenth century New England
intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Throw and
Margaret Fuller, among others, who espoused philosophy known as transcendentalism.
The Transcendentalist movement, which emerged in the mid eighteen thirties,
(00:47):
had a straightforward idea at its core. Adherents argued that
every person possesses the light of capital d divine truth,
then should look within themselves defined it, rather than simply
conform to whatever the powers that be want them to think.
But from that notion of spiritual self reliance, a lot
(01:08):
of other ideas blossomed, from reverence for nature to the
view that everyone is entitled freedom and equality. That led
Transcendentalists to become an important part of other activist movements
in America at the time that sought to abolish slavery
and achieve women's suffrage. For example, it was inspired in
(01:28):
part by thinkers on the other side of the Atlantic.
The actual name of the movement, Transcendental, came from German
philosopher Emmanuel Kant's seventeen eighty eight manuscript Critique of Practical Reason.
Emerson was a great admirer of English Romantic writers William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both of whom he met
when he traveled to Europe, and Frederick Henry Hedge, a
(01:52):
Unitarian minister who studied in Germany, brought German philosophy back
to America with him, along with a number of other
interested writers, politicians, and thinkers at large. They began meeting
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in eighteen thirty six. Before the article
this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke via
email with Laura Dasso Walls, the William P. And Hazel B. White,
(02:15):
professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and
author of the acclaimed twenty seventeen biography Henry David Threaux
A life, as she said, all through the war years,
the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the War of eighteen twelve,
Americans found it virtually impossible to go to Europe or
even to access European books. But after the peace Treaty
(02:38):
of eighteen fifteen, suddenly traveled to Europe was wide open again.
A whole generation of ambitious young American men sailed to
Europe to continue their education at European universities, above all
in Germany. The books and ideas and teachings they brought
with them Kant Girder, the Humboldt Brothers, Samuel Taylor, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Byron and Shelley, and Don and on in used American
(03:00):
colleges and universities with an exciting new wave of European
literature and philosophy. It was a wave which swiftly spread
into the popular imagination, inspiring a widespread confidence that a
new age was born, an age in which the individual
could intuit truth for him or herself by an inward
search for meaning. Yet, a year after the group first met,
(03:24):
Emerson urged in his speech and later essay The American Scholar,
for Americans to stop looking to Europe for inspiration and imitation,
and to be themselves. Walls said, Transcendentalism became the first
distinctly American philosophy because it fused several different currents, all
of which converged only here in the US. So even
(03:46):
though the underlying philosophy first emerged in Europe, it was
in America that it took hold as a philosophy one
could actually commit to and live by. A One of
Transcendentalism's key influences was the religious faith of New England's Puritans,
who believed that every person stands before God and must
read the Bible for themselves, a Wall said, this gave
(04:09):
us the bedrock notion of individualism. Another important ingredient was
the American Revolution, which promoted a quality as an American ideal,
even if the new country didn't actually afford that status
to a lot of its people, including women, most people
of color, and the formerly enslaved a. Walls said. The Transcendentalists,
(04:30):
whose parents had grown up fighting the Revolution, believed it
was their turn to continue the revolution, that is, to
continue the political revolution by igniting it as an intellectual revolution.
Their small group became known as the Transcendental Club. They
eventually published a magazine, The Dial, which was edited by
(04:51):
Margaret Fuller. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was the business manager of
the magazine, and in eighteen sixty established the first English
language kindergar in the US. Later, some of the Transcendentalists
even created a short lived utopian community near Boston based
on their ideas, a brook farm whose residents shared the
agricultural work and operated a school. While the Transcendentalists were
(05:17):
a rebellious fringe, a lot of their ideas eventually became
an accepted part of the American mainstream. O. Walls explained,
as Emerson said, in self trust, all the virtues are comprehended.
This notion of self trust became the foundation for American
self reliance, another term coined by Emerson. Henry David Threaux,
(05:41):
a former schoolmaster turned poet and philosopher, bought into Transcendentalist
philosophical ideas and endeavored to live them. In eighteen forty five,
he built a cottage on Walden Pond on property owned
by Emerson, and spent several years living off the land,
meditating and contemplating nature. In eighteen forty six, Thereau stopped
(06:03):
paying taxes in protest against slavery and the US War
against Mexico. He was arrested by the local constable for
tax delinquency and spent a night in jail before a
benefactor paid off his debt. The experience led the Roe
to publish his influential essay Civil Disobedience, in which he
argued that people should defy the government rather than support
(06:23):
policies they saw as unjust. Thereau advocated nonviolent action, but
later penned a letter in support of the violent actions
of John Brown, who murdered unarmed pro slavery settlers in Kansas.
Owall said, Thereau gave us the classic examples a first
in his uniquely individualist form of social protest and civil disobedience,
(06:46):
and then in pursuing his utopian search for truth by
living in solitude at Walden Pond, a striking out alone
to enjoy an original relation to the universe. As Emerson said,
this original relation included the universe of human history, but
world literature, the world's religions, modern science, philosophy, all the
way back to the ancient Greeks play too. Above all,
(07:08):
but also famously the universe of the outer world or nature,
which the Transcendentalists regarded as the embodiment of divine reason,
hence the key to universal meaning. According to Walls, the
Transcendentalists quote interpreted truth not as something that one could
find single and static, but as something one lived, dynamic
(07:31):
and always evolving and changing. That unending search for the
truth also led the movement's members to become activists in
big causes of their day. The Transcendentalist belief that every
person carries God within themselves meant that politics, economics, organized religion,
and schools, all with tendencies to sort people into hierarchical ranks,
(07:54):
needed to be reformed or even overhauled. A Wall said
the American educational system was their first target. Education should
be free to all of all ages, men and women alike,
and all ethnicities, races, and creeds. Many of the Transcendentalists
were teachers, and several Bronze and Alcott, Elizabeth Peabody, and
thereaux A founded innovative progressive schools which embraced literacy and
(08:18):
education for everyone, including women and African Americans. Transcendentalists also
took up the fight against slavery. Walls said it was
led notably by women who took up the cause starting
in the eighteen thirties by founding anti slavery societies at
the local level and organizing anti slavery activism at all levels, local, regional,
(08:39):
and national. Some members acted as conductors on the Underground Railroad,
and a minister in the group, One Theodore Parker, not
only preached abolitionist sermons, but formed a vigilance committee to
protect free black people in Boston from Southerners there to
catch freedom seekers and Dentalists were also early advocates for
(09:02):
women's rights. Margaret Fuller's eighteen forty five book Woman in
the Nineteenth Century contained what was for the time a
daring proclamation quote what woman needs is not as a
woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow,
as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live
freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given
(09:23):
her when we left our common home a. Fuller's influence
was felt three years later at the Seneca Falls Convention,
the conference that's widely recognized as the beginning of the
women's rights movement. The Transcendentalist movement eventually began to fade,
but its ideas never really went away and manifested into
(09:43):
later reform movements in the nineteen sixties and seventies, for example,
there was a resurgence of enthusiasm for throw as antiwar
activists found his ideas about resisting the power structure were
highly relevant today. Climate activists argue that environmental PreTect action
and social justice for poor people and minority communities aren't
separate issues, but are actually inseparably linked. Another transcendentalist idea,
(10:10):
Wall said, interest in the Roe's ideas is stronger today
than ever before. Certainly, students in my own classes resonate
to his message more urgently than ever. They identify with
the Roe's fear that we're living lies of quiet desperation,
and many respond with intense hope to the solutions he offers.
For one reason, his is an individualist form of hope.
(10:32):
You can take on his ethical project by yourself, on
your own, no matter who you are or where you live.
In other words, he offers a sense that even today,
we can exert at least some control over our lives,
learn to live by a higher ethical standard, and so
at the least make our own lives better. A place
to start the ethical project of making all lives better.
(10:59):
Today's episode is based on the article what is Transcendentalism
and how did it change America? On HowStuffWorks dot Com
written by Patrick J. Kiger. Rain Stuff is production of
by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and
is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts myheart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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