Transcendentalism: The Metaphysics of the Theme

Abstract

INCE F. 0. MATTHIESSEN wrote American Renaissance in I94I, we 9have seen anthologies of primary material like Miller's The Transcendentalists, collections of critical essays, fine works on single figures like Paul's Emerson's Angle of Vision and The Shores of America, and studies of paired figures such as Porte's Emerson and Thoreau. Unlike scholars of British romanticism, we have devoted relatively little recent attention to theoretical matters concerning the nature of American transcendentalism as a philosophical and aesthetic movement-as though we feel that matters have been settled, that there is no more to be said. But in other areas of specialization, even with the largest or most ancient concerns-aesthetic design in Shakespeare's plays, for example, or source studies in Chaucer-more is being discovered, perhaps because discovery itself is the offspring of two literary and philosophical sensibilities meeting, one the writer's, the other the reader's. Although their usefulness has long been noted, obvious limitations mark the variety of area studies which have accrued over the years. Transcendentalists were sometimes religious or literary or political figures. Some were all of these; but, in the strictest senses of the terms, some were none of these. Thus, the investigator concerned to define transcendentalism as being predominantly any one of the above sorts of movements automatically makes exclusions and judgments. As a result, transcendental theory exists in bits and pieces strewn throughout many disciplines and, within those disciplines, throughout many works. While a focused, multidisciplinary synthesis might provide the needed coherence, the versatility demanded virtually foredooms the effort. Transcendentalism may, however, be