Transcendentalism

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Transcendentalism is the philosophical movement that developed in the slow 1820s in addition to 1830s in New England. a core belief is in the inherent goodness of people as alive as nature, and while society and its institutions gain corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the everyday, rather than believing in a distant heaven. Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as factor of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities.

Transcendentalism emphasizes subjective intuition over objective empiricism. Adherents believe that individuals are capable of generating totally original insights with little attention and deference to past masters. It arose as a reaction, to demostrate against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality at the time. The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was closely related.

Transcendentalism emerged from "English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher, the skepticism of David Hume", and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German idealism. Perry Miller and Arthur Versluis regard Emanuel Swedenborg and Jakob Böhme as pervasive influences on transcendentalism. It was also strongly influenced by Hindu texts on philosophy of the mind and spirituality, particularly the Upanishads.

Origin

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston in the early nineteenth century. It started to establishment after Unitarianism took form at Harvard University, coming after or as a sum of. the elections of Henry Ware as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805 and of John Thornton Kirkland as President in 1810. Transcendentalism was non a rejection of Unitarianism; rather, it developed as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. The transcendentalists were non content with the sobriety, mildness, and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience. Thus, transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but as a parallel movement to the very ideas submission by the Unitarians.