Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson And Henry David Thoreau
Thesis: Transcendentalism aimed to explain man’s place in the universe; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau shared their beliefs on man’s relationship to nature in their writings.
I. Transcendentalists believed in a relationship between man, God, and nature.
A. Thoreau explains in Walden that nature is not dead history, but living poetry; it is as if he is explaining that the truth of life lies within the relationship of man and nature (Thoreau 921).
B. It was developed by the Greek philosopher Plato and refers to a literary and philosophical movement developed in the 19th century; Loveland and Hively state that transcendentalists believed human values laid outside the limits of reason and belong to the realm of instinct or intuition …show more content…
Emerson and Thoreau believed that nature is a living essence that supplies insight on what it means to be human and possesses all the knowledge man needs to know if he is willing to receive it.
C. Emerson talks on man’s relationship to nature when he writes, “in the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows; this “wild delight” is not credited to nature or to man, but to the combination of the two. (Emerson, 510).
III. Transcendentalism rejected traditional Puritan beliefs and consequently gave religious qualities to the relationship between man and nature.
A. Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia says that the transcendentalists “…expressed religious feeling toward nature and toward creative depths of the human personality and appealed to intuition as the source of a higher truth than that revealed by science or rational theology” (Bram et al. 240).
B. Emerson describes nature as a “universal being” and believed there was a spiritual sense of the natural world around him (Emerson 511).
C. An article in Hinduism Today states that the emphasis on the forces of nature over the powers of man was radical thinking, yet such ideas freed transcendentalists to study literature, philosophy, religion, and other cultures (Emerson and the Transcendentalists
I. Transcendentalists believed in a relationship between man, God, and nature.
A. Thoreau explains in Walden that nature is not dead history, but living poetry; it is as if he is explaining that the truth of life lies within the relationship of man and nature (Thoreau 921).
B. It was developed by the Greek philosopher Plato and refers to a literary and philosophical movement developed in the 19th century; Loveland and Hively state that transcendentalists believed human values laid outside the limits of reason and belong to the realm of instinct or intuition …show more content…
Emerson and Thoreau believed that nature is a living essence that supplies insight on what it means to be human and possesses all the knowledge man needs to know if he is willing to receive it.
C. Emerson talks on man’s relationship to nature when he writes, “in the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows; this “wild delight” is not credited to nature or to man, but to the combination of the two. (Emerson, 510).
III. Transcendentalism rejected traditional Puritan beliefs and consequently gave religious qualities to the relationship between man and nature.
A. Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia says that the transcendentalists “…expressed religious feeling toward nature and toward creative depths of the human personality and appealed to intuition as the source of a higher truth than that revealed by science or rational theology” (Bram et al. 240).
B. Emerson describes nature as a “universal being” and believed there was a spiritual sense of the natural world around him (Emerson 511).
C. An article in Hinduism Today states that the emphasis on the forces of nature over the powers of man was radical thinking, yet such ideas freed transcendentalists to study literature, philosophy, religion, and other cultures (Emerson and the Transcendentalists