American Transcendentalism Research Articles

Carlyle, Chartism and Reform in Transcendental America

Thomas Carlyle's influence on American Romanticism and transcendentalism was challenged by his 1839 book Chartism. Chartism was a turning point for his influence in America; it occasioned the first serious questioning of his ideas by American progressives and set the stage for many transcendentalists to move away from the world of ideas and toward more concerted efforts at reform and social change. This article examines the effects of Chartism in the progressive circles of the Cincinnati-based journal The Western Messenger and its aftereffects in transcendental New England.

Locating American Experience

For Cavell, American transcendentalism and film share the capacity to provide an education in taking an interest in one’s experience. The results of such interest are for him ultimately political, allowing for self-cultivation and hence for mutual progress; an aspiration both romantic and liberal. However, the meeting of an experiential focus with political hopes extends beyond Cavell, and the wider fact of this convergence allows us to conceive his project as part of a broader milieu. One way to think Cavell historically is to consider some of the contexts in which his voice was forged. Although he sometimes alludes to it, we don’t readily associate Cavell with 1960s radicalism, the counterculture, or the New Left. His sensibility and concerns seem more abstract than this, and operate on other planes than activism or polemic. His voice also unmistakably belongs to both a disciplinary training in philosophy (specifically, a 1950s analytic context) and to an earlier generation. Yet granting the unmistakable significance of these, we can still observe that despite his originality, and his anomalousness as an analytic philosopher, Cavell is not an a-contextual voice in American letters. He is not alone in exploring the value of attention to (American) experience as a resource for improvement, a fact to which he himself draws notice. Further, he anticipates certain developments in our critical present centred around the possibilities for a tone of hope and optimism with more than personal implications.

Miles of stare: transcendentalism and the problem of literary vision in nineteenth-century America

Miles of explores the problem of nineteenth-century American literary vision: the strange conflation of visible reality and poetic language that emerges repeatedly in the metaphors and literary creations of American transcendentalists. The strangeness of nineteenth-century poetic vision is exemplified most famously by Emerson's transparent eyeball. That disembodied, omniscient seer is able to shed its body and transcend sight paradoxically in order to see - not to create - poetic language on the American landscape. In Miles of Stare, Michelle Kohler explores the question of why, given American transcendentalism's anti-empiricism, the movement's central trope becomes an eye purged of imagination. And why, furthermore, she asks, despite its insistent empiricism, is this notorious eye also so decidedly not an eye? What are the ethics of casting a boldly equivocal metaphor as the source of a national literature amidst a national landscape fraught with slavery, genocide, poverty, and war? Miles of explores these questions first by tracing the historical emergence of the metaphor of poetic vision as the transcendentalists assimilated European precedents and wrestled with America's troubling rhetoric of manifest destiny and national identity. These questions are central to the work of many nineteenth-century authors writing in the wake of transcendentalism, and Kohler offers examples from the writings of Douglass, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Howells, and Jewett that form a cascade of new visual metaphors that address the irreconcilable contradictions within the transcendentalist metaphor and pursue their own efforts to produce an American literature. Douglass's doomed witness to slavery, Hawthorne's reluctantly omniscient narrator, and Dickinson's empty miles of Stare variously skewer the authority of Emerson's all-seeing poetic eyeball while attributing new authority to the limitations that mark their own literary gazes. Tracing this metaphorical conflict across genres from the 1830s through the 1880s, Miles of illuminates the divergent, contentious fates of American literary vision as nineteenth-century writers wrestle with the commanding conflation of vision and language that lies at the centre of American transcendentalism- and at the core of American national identity.

Is Healthcare Hazardous to Life? An American Transcendentalist Perspective

Is Healthcare Hazardous to Life? An American Transcendentalist Perspective

American gurus: from American transcendentalism to New Age religion

American gurus: from American transcendentalism to New Age religion

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER AND THE IDEA OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION IN THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES (1823-1841)

The spirit to respect the rights of all living environment in literature that was found in the 1970s in William Rueckert’s works was considered as the emergence of the new criticism in literature, ecocriticism, which brought the efforts to trace the spirit in works of literature. Works arose after the 1840s written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margareth Fuller, the American transcendentalists, are considered to be the first works presenting the respect for the living environment as claimed by Peter Barry. James Fenimore Cooper’s reputation in American literary history appeared because of his role in leading American literature into its identity. Among his works, The Leatherstocking Tales mostly attracted European readers’ attention when he successfully applied American issues. The major issue in the work is the spirit of the immigrants to dominate flora, fauna and human beings as was experienced by the indigenous people. Applying ecocriticism theory in doing the analysis, it has been found that Cooper’s works particularly his The Leatherstocking Tales (1823-1841) present Cooper’s great concern for the sustainable life. He shows that compassion, respect, wisdom, and justice are the essential aspects in preserving nature that meet the main concern of ecocriticism and hence the works that preceded the transcendentalists’ work places themselves as the embryo of ecocriticism in America.Keywords: Ecocriticism, James Fenimore Cooper, The Leatherstocking Tales, living environment, sustainable life

Autonomy as self-sovereignty.

The concept of autonomy as self-sovereignty is developed in this essay through an examination of the thought of American transcendentalist philosophers Emerson and Thoreau. It is conceived as the quality of living in accordance with one's inner nature or genius. This conception is grounded in a transcendentalist moral anthropology that values independence, self-reliance, spirituality, and the capacity to find beauty in the world. Though still exerting considerable popular and academic influence, both the concept of autonomy as self-sovereignty and the underlying anthropology diverge in important ways from counterparts that are prominent in contemporary bioethics. Autonomy as self-sovereignty calls into question the manifold ways that patients (and citizens) are brought to heel by institutional (and political) values they do not themselves affirm. It also emphasizes the inevitable deep plurality of moral visions of health and appropriate healthcare, rejecting tendencies (strong in mainstream bioethics) to regard "health" as a univocal concept or healthcare as a basic need, to attempt to conform "reasonable" clinical decision-making to a single model, and to appoint government as a guarantor of access to healthcare or a regulator of healthcare standards. Autonomy as self-sovereignty, like its competitors, can justify itself only in question-begging terms. Still, bioethics might do well to recognize it within the mix of moral visions.

Humanism and Ethos in the Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Abstract The article deals with the ideas of humanity and morality as reflected in the works of R. W. Emerson, the main representative of an intellectual movement called American transcendentalism. It conveys basic facts about the movement and focuses on the key aspects of Emerson’s transcendental philosophy, particularly his concept of the Over-soul and his concept of Nature, which gave his humanistic philosophy a religious and moral accent. Due to it, Emerson’s religious humanism also became the basis of American democratic individualism. The article offers insight into Emerson’s ideas on morality and ethical behaviour, which challenge us to live in harmony with God and nature.

Life Inspiration of Walden

Walden is a very famous book written by Henry David Thoreau who is a representative of American Transcendentalism. In this book, Thoreau indicates lfe inspiration, it advocats simple outward, Thoreau strictly criticizes the American life style, in walden, he advocates people to lessen their desire for the so-called “necessary of life”, some of which might turn out to be burden of life. Too much attachment to material world would deprive people of aesthetic sense, moral refinement, and physical freedom. It also advocats Awareness of environmental protection, Thoreau is a conservationist who practices “Small is beautiful.” He made minimum demands on the earth, and lived with great frugality. Then it advocats rich inward, Thoreau explains in Walden that one reason for his experiment of life in the woods was to see what a person actually needed and how much lifetime he really had to pay in exchange for those necessities. At last Thoreau concluded in walden it is the simple material life and rich spiritual life that people should pursue. This is also ecological responsibilityof human beings .

Hilary Putnam interviewed by Naoko Saito and Paul Standish

Journal of Philosophy of EducationVolume 48, Issue 1 p. 1-27 Original Article Hilary Putnam interviewed by Naoko Saito and Paul Standish First published: 21 February 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12059Citations: 5 Correspondence: Paul Standish, Centre for Philosophy, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H0AL, UK. Email: paul.standish@ioe.ac.uk Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract The interview, which took place on the eve of the 2012 American presidential election, coincides with the publication of three major works by or about Hilary Putnam. It begins and ends with the topic of science, drawing attention to science's profound importance but also to its contemporary forms of distortion. It explores Putnam's current views on realism, with reference to conceptual relativity and ‘objectivity without objects’. The nature of philosophy and its sometimes-dishonest relationship to scepticism is considered, especially in relation to the work of Stanley Cavell and Richard Rorty. Putnam acknowledges that he has learned much from Wittgenstein, but he laments Wittgenstein's apparent insensitivity to the value of, and spiritual depth in, Plato. He recognises Rorty's contribution to the revival of pragmatism, but he roundly criticises the version of it advanced by Rorty and by his student, Robert Brandom. It is classical pragmatism's achievement in overcoming the fact-value dichotomy that Putnam wishes particularly to emphasise. While acknowledging tensions in the work of Dewey, between the sensitive aesthetician and the social reformer, Putnam stresses Dewey's importance, alongside that of Martin Buber, in shaping his own political and religious views. In the course of the discussion further tensions are considered—between pragmatism and American transcendentalism, and between analytic and continental philosophy. The interview closes with reference to politics and to the perilous situation of the humanities today. Citing Literature Volume48, Issue1February 2014Pages 1-27 RelatedInformation

Toward a cosmic sociology of education

We old warriors of ideology critique and wissensoziologie should not be too hard on ourselves for having forgotten reflexivity and the labors of putting paradigms, including our own, back into the context of history and social movement. Normal science is our necessary bread and butter. We achieved a lot by shaking the liberal foundations of sociology of education, although in America, despite a mandatory ‘inclusiveness’ in educational studies, in the higher science of sociology of education, liberalism still holds sway, underneath the triumphant pyrotechnics of advanced multivariate analyses. You may have some qualitative research, however, even focused on studies of race and gender. Still, class analysis did, and again now, does, make a dent, accumulating careful empirical research, both in ethnographies and models of statistical causality. Likewise, when postmodernism took the stage, curriculum studies added new light and meaning to understanding the school text. More recently and less prominently, ‘spirituality’ now revitalizes interest in ‘holistic’ education, even ‘transcendental learning’, as Miller calls his revival of the nineteenth-century American Transcendentalist movement, in education.

Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture

Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture

“The Delicious Sense of Foreignness”: American Transcendentalism in the Atlantic

This essay presents one example of the ways in which place, transiency, and change have shaped the American experience. In the mid-nineteenth century a diverse group of American Transcendentalists came together on the island of Fayal in the Azores. The Transcendentalists' reaction to the Portuguese Catholic culture they encountered in the Azores indicates a broader pattern among nineteenth-century American liberals. These tourists operated within a larger transatlantic atmosphere of uncertainty characterized at times by hope but also by crisis. This culture of uncertainty, moreover, was one of the key factors in shaping how American liberals struggled with their conceptions of religion and nation.

Interpretation of Henderson the Rain King in Light of Emerson’s Theories of Transcendentalism

Related to the basic features of Emerson’s theories of Transcendentalism, the exploration of the novel in this thesis goes on three aspects. First, Bellow’s concept of nature adopted in this novel is an expression of transcendental notion of nature. Secondly, in Henderson the Rain King Bellow also inherits the legacy of American transcendentalism as the emphasis of spirit or the oversoul. Thirdly, Bellow values individuality as highly as his literary predecessor Emerson did, however, in this novel he discards individualism. As Bellow’s first mature novel, Henderson the Rain King reflects Bellow’s attitude toward the tradition of American Transcendentalism: acceptance and surpass.

Lovely Apparitions and Spiritualized Corpses Consumption, Medical Discourse, and Edgar Allan Poe's Female Vampire

Abstract This essay examines the associations of consumption with the disease of tuberculosis and vampirism, as well as the ways nineteenth-century medical discourse and vampire narratives facilitated the creation of a pathologized female body. Early nineteenth-century medical discourse and literature on consumption exalted the materiality of the consuming female body by transforming suffering into something beautiful, pure and spiritual, or even sexual. Poe's consuming brides, however, embodied the horrifying reality of the decomposing body that remains alive. In particular, Poe's “Ligeia” (1838) is an eloquent example of this tension between idealism and materiality. By reading Poe's vampire tales through the context of antebellum metaphysics and discourses on consumption, I argue that his unique treatment of female vampires simultaneously responds to, and deviates from, these topics. Influenced by Schelling's philosophy, Poe's vampire tales are shuddering examples of woman's materialized spirit. Following his own thread of gothic materialism, and moving away from American Transcendentalists, Poe offers ghastly visions of an absolutism that is at once distinctly feminine and horrific.

Translating World Religions: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s and Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Ethnical Scriptures’ Column in The Dial

In the ‘Ethnical Scriptures’ column in the American Transcendentalist periodical The Dial, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau published modified translations (by colonial magistrates and missionaries) of mainly Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian texts, accompanied by prefaces explaining the significance of each work. The suggestion is put forward that the translations and prefaces were structured in such a way as to support Emerson’s and Thoreau’s theological liberalism, religious universalism, and Western conceptions of the Orient. The question of literal translation and postcolonial theories on Orientalism are also addressed. The prefaces are closely read and the translations are compared with other English ones that are considered by religious studies scholars to be more accurate to the original text. These translations ‘westernize’ the diction of the works, present the texts in incomprehensible segments, and create an exoticized, unholistic picture of Eastern religions.

Contact

Contact Douglas E. Christie In Henry David Thoreau’s account of his journey up Mt. Ktaadn, originally published in The Maine Woods in 1864, there is a particular moment when the usual categories for describing experience seem to fall short, when language itself strains under the weight of trying to encompass the experience: “What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries!—Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”1 Contact. Such a simple word. Deceptively simple. Here, it points to a phenomenon both fundamental and elusive: the sense of being taken up into a mysterious reality utterly necessary but forever beyond our comprehension. And, in Thoreau’s account anyway, its incomprehensible character is part of what makes it so necessary. It cannot be encompassed, held, known. It is endless, and endlessly absorbing. Thoreau’s account focuses on his experience in the natural world, in particular the strange otherness he feels moving up and into the wilderness of Mt. Ktaddn. It is closely bound to an understanding of the wild that had always been dear to him and owes much to the distinctive intellectual, cultural climate of American transcendentalism that so deeply shaped his thought. Still, it also bears a close resemblance to many other accounts, in the Christian spiritual tradition and beyond, of what we have come to think of as mystical absorption. In the Christian spiritual tradition, one thinks for example of Origen, in his commentary and homilies on the Song of Songs, trying to give expression to what it is to be pierced by the “dart of love”; of Gregory of Nyssa and his account of Moses’ journey into the divine darkness; of Julian of Norwich’s humble hazelnut in which the entire cosmos can be seen and apprehended; of Teresa of Avila’s silkworm and the mysterious work of spiritual transformation to which it points and perhaps offers access. Here we encounter language that evokes, opens up and finally falls silent before the mysterious experience of being immersed in the divine. How confident can we be, when we listen to someone from the nineteenth or sixteenth or fourth century speak of such an experience, that we understand what he or she is referring to or what precisely it means? Also, how much commonality [End Page vii] can one expect or hope to find among and between different accounts of mystical absorption across a given tradition, or between different traditions? We have learned to be sensitive to the historical, cultural and linguistic specificity of such experiences, and to refrain from moving too quickly or easily to assume similarity between what often turn out to be utterly different experiences. Is this specificity so fundamental that one must always acknowledge difference as the starting point and only move tentatively to seek points of possible commonality? Or can we legitimately look for commonality amidst difference? Further, in inquiring into the meaning of such intense experiences of absorption, how can we learn to be sensitive not only to the personal significance they may have for the one bearing witness but also to the larger social or communal significance of such experiences? In what sense should they be understood as responding to and shaping the life of the larger community, always embedded in and speaking to a particular historical moment? These are only a few of the questions that arise for those who study, reflect on and write about such experiences. But they recur often. And they echo some of the central concerns found among the contributions in this issue of Spiritus. Such questions are neither as abstract or abstruse as they first appear. Inquiring carefully into the character and context of deep spiritual experiences in this way can help to illuminate their possible meaning, for both individuals and communities, and help us overcome the kinds of distortions or caricatures to which they are too often subjected. Further, it can help us hone our own interpretive work by inviting an ever-closer attention to the particular...

The Romantic Discourse of Ameen Rihani and Percy Shelley

Abstract Most contemporary studies of Rihani’s The Book of Khalid draw attention to its intertextuality and American Transcendentalism and/or ‘‘the voice of Carlyle.’’ This article intends to interrogate the silent presence of a different intertextuality by invoking English Romanticism as it emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although Rihani’s Khalid does not seem to be aware of the poet and essayist Percy Shelley, it is this absence that makes him all the more relevant. Such an undertaking is not an exercise in compiling a list of Rihani’s sources, but rather a new reading of the diversity and plurality of a particular paradigmatic literary genre that animated a new generation of Arab authors and intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century. It is an attempt to decipher the signatures of a literary event in its Western and Arab contexts.

Introduction: New Approaches to Goethe’s Lyric Poetry

Introduction: New Approaches to Goethe’s Lyric Poetry Horst Lange and Christian P. Weber This collection of articles emerged from a series of panels devoted to Goethe’s lyric poetry at the Thirty-first Conference of the German Studies Association in 2010. The organizers, including Regina Sachers, were motivated by the observation that this genre of Goethe’s writings has been surprisingly understudied in recent years. On the one hand, scholars have tended to revisit very similar questions raised by a comparatively small number of individual poems; only rarely have new contexts or innovative theoretical approaches been brought into play. On the other hand, David Wellbery’s magisterial study The Specular Moment: Goethe’s Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism (1996) has been received with such appreciation that scholars seem to have been discouraged from pursuing new directions in this area of research. Our aim was to bring together a wide variety of established and emerging Goethe scholars and take stock of the current innovative approaches to Goethe’s lyric poetry. We are hopeful that the following articles, which (with one exception) have their origin in this panel series, will open up new avenues of research and poetic insight as they examine Goethe’s lyric through various discursive lenses and from different theoretical angles. The first three contributions propose new ways of reading Goethe’s early poems that go beyond David Wellbery’s methodology and assessments. Edgar Landgraf, meeting David Wellbery on his home turf, makes a strong argument that the discursive formation of Goethe’s early poems is better understood if approached with a rigorous application of Luhmann’s systems theory. Christian Weber delineates metapoetic strategies in Goethe’s early poetry and argues that the arrangement of the “great hymns of genius” in the Erste Weimarer Gedichtsammlung constitutes a dimension of poetic meaning that cannot be captured by the common approach of reading poems as singular events. Joseph O’Neil’s reading of Erklärung eines alten Holzschnittes vorstellend Hans Sachsens poetische Sendung reviews David Wellbery’s notion of “specular romanticism.” As O’Neil argues, in this poem of his first Weimar years Goethe proclaims an alternative version of “poetic vocation” based on distinction, mediation, and judgment instead of the imagined identity between the self and the cosmos that had been suggested as characteristic of his earlier poems. Other articles gain new ground by activating new contexts. Reading Mignon’s “Kennst du das Land” both in its setting in Wilhelm Meisters [End Page 3] Lehrjahre and in the context of a theory of empathy, Fritz Breithaupt asks how this poem, despite thematizing a highly individual fate, can command universal appeal. Frauke Berndt and Claudia Maienborn draw on insights from linguistics, psychoanalysis, and rhetoric to argue that the “standard” reading of Auf dem See, which construes the “reifende Frucht” as a symbol of the maturing subject, is highly questionable; their proposed reading of the poem casts it as a “media event.” Daniel Wilson submits that the questions raised by Selige Sehnsucht are best answered by placing it in a series of Divan poems that talk about homosexuality. Benjamin Bennett argues that—in light of the “antipoetic” agenda of Faust—poetry can only relate to truth by enacting it; he carefully reads two poems (Dauer im Wechsel and Vermächtniß) to make visible the features of such an enactment. Via Goethe’s theory of science and American transcendentalism, Hannah Eldridge connects her analysis of the difficulties of comprehending the Divan poem Unbegrenzt to Stanley Cavell’s response to the problems of skepticism. And, intriguingly, starting with Unbegrenzt as well, Charlotte Lee finds that the Divan and Hegel’s speculative philosophy resonate with surprising similarities. [End Page 4] Horst Lange University of Central Arkansas Christian P. Weber Florida State University Copyright © 2013 Goethe Society of North America

Transcendence

Transcendence Speer Morgan The notion of transcendence is by definition paradoxical. The Latin transcendo means to climb above or pass over, which begs the obvious question: rise above or get beyond what? However the word is used—whether in reference to religion, philosophy or literature—it is associated with its opposite, the immanent world with all its failures and blessings. The Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau borrowed much from German philosophy, Swedenborgian Idealism and English Romanticism. Yet on a simple and practical level it represented the first important flowering of literary emancipation in a recently formed nation. At least among a certain group, the Boston of the 1830s offered a new openness and sense of hope. “We will walk on our own feet, we will work with our own hands, we will speak our own minds,” said Emerson in “American Scholar.” He concluded the essay by calling for a revolution in human consciousness based on idealist philosophy. The Transcendentalists were among the earliest Americans to have been born on the other side of two centuries of religious constraint, political turmoil and financial scarcity. It is no insult to say that they were the first generation to have the luxury of being as hopeful about human experience and literature as their immediate forebears had been about politics. They sought to rise from the drudgery of ordinary life through a new attunement of the human mind to all of Nature. By opening ourselves to that powerful and mysterious dominion, we could “build therefore” our own world. [End Page 5] American Transcendentalism was both derivative of the English Romantics and German Idealists and at the same time thoroughly rooted in its own time and place. It is no accident that it was born in the place where the American Revolution had been conceived, summoning a second revolution in which the power of the mind might exceed the stifling conditions of the mundane. This is of course a very old dichotomy—older surely than recorded thought. It is part of the urge that decorated Neolithic cave walls as well as a key impetus of religion. In literature, philosophy, art and religion, the transcendental impulse suggests the mystery and power of a larger world as well as orders of meaning that we can participate in but not fully understand. It also calls for there being a gap between the known and the great unknown, which can infer a sublime sense of wonder. Yet the desire to rise above or pass beyond, in whatever form it takes, comes from and in some sense contemplates its opposite—the ensnarement, predicament and mortal quagmire of normal human existence. The old split between the known and the unknown is reflected today in scientific discussions about the human mind. Called the last frontier because of how little is understood despite recent advances, neurological theory falls generally into two camps. One holds that it is only a matter of time before we have the brain dissected, understood and perhaps even replicated through artificial intelligence. The scientists directing the president’s new Brain Initiative hope for this, although they are quite frank about how little we know about the brain at present. The other side believes that no matter how much neural mapping we do, for reasons biological and also ontological, we will never fully comprehend the human mind. The brain contains some hundred billion neurons connected in ways that are currently little understood. Also, the brain is more flexible than it was even recently assumed to be. Regardless of which side is closer to the truth, few disagree with neurologist David Eagleman, who compares human consciousness and the full mind to “a stowaway on a transatlantic steam ship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot.” Fiction in this issue includes Alan Rossi’s story “Unmoving Like a Mighty River Stilled” about a group of men who have sought sublime experience for years through extreme climbing and parachuting. The protagonist, Kieran, feels that the group has become too addicted to talk and publicity and as a result has lost interest in the “thing itself.” Their quest for hazardous adventure reaches a scary climax as they climb [End Page...