Transcendentalism and American Transcendentalists Introduction Let me invite you to go beyond our horizon.

Let me invite you to listen to our silence. Let me invite you to visit your own realm beyond your realities. Yes, let me invite you to come out of the world of words to realize what really the term transcendentalism is. Transcendentalism can be experienced only in transcendental meditation Its true that all of us have certain frames and limits. And it is also true that we are never satisfied with our limits and limitations and we also are often ready to transcend the usual visible limits of limited life. We wish to achieve something great and absolute. Transcendent and Transcendental It was German philosopher Immanuel Kant who made a technical distinction between the term transcendent and transcendental. He reserved the term transcendent for entities like God and the Soul, which are thought to be beyond human experience and are therefore unknowable. Kant used the term transcendental to signify a priori forms of thoughts, that is innate principles with which mind gives form to its perception and makes experience intelligible. In the medieval age, these two terms were used in a more narrow and technical sense by scholastic philosophers. They had recognized six transcendental concepts: essence, unity, goodness, truth, and something. Transcendental Philosophy Transcendental philosophy is closely associated with the Platonic belief in higher reality. Higher reality or higher kind of knowledge is above the common knowledge that is achieved by human senses. Plato had developed the notion that higher reality exists beyond the power of human comprehension, and he emphasized the view that the idea of absolute goodness transcends human description. According to him, the existence of absolute goodness can be experienced only through intuition. Transcendental philosophy is a kind of revival of platonic concept of goodness and higher reality. Kant applied the term transcendental philosophy to the study of pure mind. Later German idealistic philosophers like Fichte, Schelling and Husserl described their views as transcendental. What is Transcendentalism? Simply transcendentalism is a kind of revival of the Platonic belief in greater or higher reality that can be perceived by direct spiritual insight. Actually the word transcendentalism was derived from German Romantic Philosophy. Systematizing the romantic distrust of the intellect and exaltation of intuition, the German philosophies emphasized the act of transcend and affirmed that man could apprehend reality by intuition. In their phraseology the reason by which they really meant intuition, knew truths which transcended those accessible to the understanding (which was the faculty employed in logical argument and scientific inquiry). Consequently the term transcendentalism

came to be applied almost to the concepts of metaphysical idealism. And with the passage of time, it appeared as a movement in philosophical and literary fields. It is one of the key points of romanticism. Transcendentalism in America In the first half of the 19th century, transcendentalism appeared as a philosophical and literary movement in America. It was a reaction to 18th century rationalist doctrines and a rejection of the strict Puritan religious attitudes that were the heritage of New England. The radical aspects of the renaissance were represented in American transcendentalism. This term was given to the intellectual attitude developed by a number of youths living in the Boston area in the 1830s. In 1836, they organized a club and a Unitarian discussion group changed into transcendental club and during 1840-44 they issued a quarterly periodical The Dial. Among the members of the club were: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Frederick Henry Hedge, George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Peabody, Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister etc. American transcendentalists acquired the attitude of transcendentalism partly from the German and partly from the British like Coleridge and Carlyle. It appealed to them largely because it provided a metaphysical justification for the ideal of individual freedom. It made them easy to think if every man could apprehend the truth by direct intuition then any form of external authority either political or religious was unnecessary. They found a way from the traditional emphasis of New England Puritanism on mans capacity for direct spiritual insight. The Puritans had believed in original sin, but they had also believed in divine grace; when man was enlightened by the Holy Spirit, he knew the truth by immediate revelation. So, transcendentalism was Calvinism modified by the romantic doctrine of mans natural goodness. Since transcendentalism is a kind of romantic philosophy, it is associated with romanticism in English and American literature. And there had been noticeable influence of Platonism through Wordsworthian pantheism. American transcendentalists were influenced by certain aspects of romanticism like self-examination, the celebration of individualism, realization of beauty of nature and humankind, self-perception etc. They noticed a direct connection between the universe and the individual soul. They regarded intuition higher human faculty than reason. There are certain arguments that American transcendentalism was neither a systematic nor a definably philosophy but rather an intellectual mode and emotional mood that was expressed by diverse voices of the American romantics. Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman Emerson was the chief transcendentalist among New Englanders. He devoted himself to the task of intellectual exploration and he propagated his ideas through his public lectures and in his two volumes of essays and other writings. He expressed his views in Nature, The American Scholar, The Over Soul, and Self-Reliance. Nature, according to him, is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipated. His central message was self-reliance. He believed

that every individual shared in the divinity which pervaded the universe, should learn to trust his own intuitions even when they conflicted with convention and tradition. In all my lectures, he said, I have taught one doctrine namely the infinitude of the private man. He applauded the gradual casting off material aids and the growing trust in the private self-supplied powers of the individual. He looked forward to the society of freeman in which order would be maintained without artificial restraints as well as the solar system. He emphasized spiritual reaffirmation of the democratic ideal. Emerson was too individualists to have much faith in institutional changes. Although he sympathized with movements for social reforms, he didnt join them feeling that the most necessary reform was that of the individual within himself. The radical implications of his thinking were undeniable and he underlined them by denouncing the commercialism and the intellectual timidity of upper classes certain aspects of Emersons thinking have not worn well. He had over optimism because he believed that the human spirit and natural universe were divine expressions. He had deep faith that all things work together for good. He was of the opinion that an eternal beneficent necessity is always bringing things right.. The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. Although such optimism was hard to understand yet Emerson was greater than his philosophy. He was a romantic philosopher, an acute observer and a critic of American life and human psychology. He was one of the great phrasemakers in literature. Thoreau was Emersons follower and friend. In his own words, he was a mystic, a transcendentalist and a natural philosopher to boot. He made no money from literature and published only two books in his life time: A Week on the Concord and Merrimake River and Walden or Life in the Woods. His essay On Civil Disobedience influenced both Tolstoy and Gandhi. In this essay he has denounced all organized government and proclaimed the duty of the individual to follow the orders of his conscience even against the state. Later on, it became a classic of philosophic anarchism. Thoreau expressed his individualism in a total refection of organized society. Emersion summarized it: He was lured to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay tax to the state; he ate no flesh; he drank no wine; he never knew the use of tobacco; and though a naturalist he used neither gun nor rod. Walt Whitman was the most famous poet of transcendental philosophy who affirmed the value of the individual and the oneness of all humanity. Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists had made positive affirmations about the spiritual values implicit in American individualism but these had been negated by Hawthorne and Melvile who had regarded transcendentalism as the expression of unrealistic optimism. With the arrival of Whitman once again there was a return to the positive affirmation but Whitman was never blind, he was very keen to awareness of what was lacking in the individualist ideal and what was needed for its consummation. He was the bard of democracy and in his early thirties, he passed through some kind of emotional transformation

that caused his to see democracy not only as a political system but also as a spiritual faith. He was influenced by Jacksonian democracy and locofoco movement. In that movement they opposed large banks and industries as a monopolistic danger. In 1842 in one of his lectures, Emerson called for an authentic American culture to celebrate the common everyday things in American life. Walt Whitman heard his lecture and heeded his call. He view of life and democracy was mystical. He realized that a man could achieve a sense of unity with God because the material world and all its inhabitants are incarnation of divinity. He celebrated the spirit and the human body both. For him human body is also as sacred as the spirit. He had deep faith and confidence in himself. He believed in the essential divinity of every human being that was lacking in American, he believed was a religious and moral faith n democratic values. And it was the function, according to him, of the writer and the artist to help in creating this faith. As a poet he helped in creating this faith but he is blamed for sexual description. His transcendental views are revealed in Leaves of Grass. Conclusion Transcendental philosophy is closely related with oriental Vedants philosophy that reached New England in the early decades of the 19th century and contributed to the thinking of Emerson and Thoreau. The transcendentalists were interested in the concepts of self-hood, that is found in Hindu Scripture in a well-elaborated doctrine of self. Such Scripture tells that the central core of ones self is identifiable with the cosmic whole. The Upanishads state: The self within you, the resplendent, immortal person is the internal self of all things and is the universal Brahma. There are many ideological similarities among Oriental literature, the neo-Platonic doctrines, Christian mysticism and the philosophy of the German Idealists like Kant and Schelling. Emersons poem Brahma is a striking example of Vedanta view. In this poem we get echo of Katha Upanishad and Gita. Mysticism of Vedanta has got an expression in Song of Myself. This is an inclusive conception of selfhood. It is a way of finding the world in the self and as the self. Like the cosmic form described in the Gita and the Dynamic Self of the Upanishad, Whitmans self sweeps through the cosmos and embraces it: What is a man anyhow? What am I? And What are you? In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley corn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. And I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means And I know I am deathless. References:

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