What Is Transcendentalism?  

Well, if you Google the exact terms above; "What is transcendentalism?" Google tells us this: 

Transcendentalism:  

• an idealistic philosophical and social movement that developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures. 
• a system developed by Immanuel Kant, based on the idea that, in order to understand the nature of reality, one must first examine and analyze the reasoning process that governs the nature of experience.  

A man known by the name of "Ralph Waldo Emerson" created this movement in 1836. 

Below are some random notes and important definitions of transcendentalism. 

• Transcendentalism - The view that the basic truths of the universe lie beyond the knowledge we obtain from our senses, reason, logic, or laws of science. We learn these truths through our intuition, our "Divine Intellect." 
• Transcend - Go beyond 
• Senses, reason, logic, or laws of science  - That which enables us to create science and technology and to understand the concrete, the physical world. 
• Intuition - That which enables us to know the existence of our own souls and their relation to a reality to a beyond the physical world and to understand the abstract. The faculty of knowing without relying solely on the senses. 

• Concrete—Having physical, material reality which can be perceived by the senses
• The Divine Intellect—part of God in each man; intuition; innate understanding of what is right and good; direct line of communication between God and man; the Divine Animal
• The Oversoul—God; the Universal Being  (Emerson’s term)
• Abstract—Not having physical, material reality, not perceivable by the senses  

Transcendentalist Beliefs  

—The spiritual unity of all forms of being with God, Humanity, and Nature all sharing a universal soul, the Oversoul

—The inherent goodness (divinity!) of Man and Nature

—The value of individualism

—The belief that the natural world is symbolic of the spirit world

—The “Lemon Pie” theory (to know the part is to know the whole)

—That Society is the source of corruptive, distracting materialism

—That Man is naturally good, even divine, because of his Divine Intellect

—That Nature is inherently good because it is symbolic of the spirit (God)

--That God, the Oversoul, is the universal soul that permeates all being (much like “the Force”)

Ralph Waldo Emerson—(Father of Transcendentalism) believed the concrete to be symbolic of the abstract. (This belief is called idealism and is as old as Plato.)

Idealism—The belief that external, physical, material reality is merely a reflection of  ideal reality

Ideal—In this usage, existing as an idea or archetypal pattern in the mind

Materialism—concern with the physical world rather than the spiritual    

Notes On Transcendentalism 

                                                                         1830's - 1860 

Transcend: Go beyond

Central Idea of Transcendentalism: The way to truth or ultimate reality is not available to reason, logic, science, or the senses; it is available only through intuition--what the Transcendentalists called the Divine Intellect.

Example: We can tell by using our reason, logic, science, and the senses, whether a person is dead or alive; we CANNOT tell by using our reason, logic, science, or the senses, whether or not it is GOOD to be alive.

Transcendentalism is an extreme form of Romanticism and shares its views of Man, Nature, God, and Society.

God: To the Transcendentalists, God is the Oversoul, the soul of the Universe. God is like the Force (in Star Wars) but without a Dark Side.

Imagine a sea or ocean of benevolence that surrounds us. This sea has no surface and no bottom. We float in this sea like little bottles.

This is the Transcendentalist idea of what the Oversoul is like.

N.B. The Transcendentalists were not Christians. Their vision of God was Unitarian--not Trinitarian.

Man: Go back to your image of the bottomless, surface-less sea. Man is a 11ff le bottle floating in the sea. The bottle is filled with a drop of the same water in which he floats. There is a cork in the bottle.

The drop of water is the Divine Intellect or Intuition--a piece of God which defines each individual person. Christians might refer to this part of Man as his conscience, or perhaps his soul.

Question: Why may Man--as Emerson puts it—“Trust (himself]”?

Answer: What he means is, that each person may trust his Divine Intellect--so to trust oneself is to trust God.

Under the right circumstances, Man may “pop his cork” and mingle his drop of water with the rest of the sea that surrounds him, experiencing complete oneness with the Oversoul.

Question: How does he do so?

Answer: He frees himself from corruptive materialism and the concerns of the material, physical, civilized world. He communes with God through contemplation of Nature.

Emerson refers to this experience of becoming one with God as becoming a “transparent eyeball” in his essay, “Nature”:

I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing; I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part or parcel of God.

In his essay “The Poet,” Emerson refers to the experience as:

...unlocking, at all risks [ human doors and suffering [ allowing] the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up in the life of the Universe; his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally understandable as the plants and animals.

According to the Transcendentalists, Man is not merely good--he is divine because of his Divine Intellect.

(Reincarnation is a belief tangential to Transcendentalism. When the “bottle” breaks, the drop of “water” returns to the “sea,” from where, conceivably, it might find itself in a new “bottle.” The Transcendentalists did NOT greatly concern themselves with this concept.)

Nature: To the Transcendentalists, Nature was a reflection of the Oversoul and the way to communicate with the Oversoul. Contemplation of Nature enables Man to “pop his cork” and become one with God.

Nature is good, beautiful, and a reflection of, and conduit to, God.

Society:

Question: What prevents the individual from following his Divine Intellect and doing what is good?

Answer: Society and its corrupting Materialism.

According to the Transcendentalists, Society is corruptive because under its influence and pressure to conform, Man is discouraged and distracted from listening to his Divine Intellect and doing what he knows in his heart to be good.