People & Ideas: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Library of Congress
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a writer, thinker and philosopher who became the leading proponent of Transcendentalism, a movement that imbued the austere New England Unitarian tradition with elements of mysticism.
In 1803, Emerson was born into a Unitarian family in Boston. His father, a minister, died two weeks before his 8th birthday; he was raised by his mother and influenced by his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson. He attended Harvard College, graduating in the middle of his class.
After earning a degree at the Harvard Divinity School, he became an ordained Unitarian minister of Boston's Second Church in 1829. He fell into disagreements over the administration of communion and public prayer. After three years, he resigned his post, saying: "This mode of celebrating Christ is no longer suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it."
Emerson settled in Concord, Mass., where he befriended Henry David Thoreau and kept company with the leading intell`ectuals of his day. In 1836, he and his colleagues founded the Transcendental Club, which served as the center of the Transcendentalist movement. Refusing to acknowledge any authority beyond themselves, the Transcendentalists believed that each individual must make their own decisions about God, the human race and the world. Emerson declared that the Transcendentalist "believes in miracles, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to the new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration and ecstasy."
In July 1838, Emerson was invited to address the graduating class at the Harvard Divinity School. In his speech, Emerson dismissed biblical miracles and claimed that while Jesus was a great man, he was not God. His comments created a firestorm; he was not invited back to the Divinity School for 30 years. He continued to express his ideas, including those about God, in lectures, essays and poems./
For Emerson, God was neither the stern judge of the Calvinists nor the distant clockmaker of the Deists. Emerson believed that God was revealed through nature. Like his British Romantic contemporaries, Emerson saw a direct connection between man, nature and God. Historian Grant Wacker describes Emerson's belief: "God was best understood as a spirit, an ideal, a breath of life; everywhere and always filling the world with the inexhaustible power of the divine presence. God was as close as the atmosphere, as intimate as the 'blowing clover and the falling rain.'"
1838년 7월, 에머슨은 하버드 신학대학원 졸업반에서 연설을 하도록 초대를 받았습니다. 연설에서 에머슨은 성경의 기적을 일축하고 예수는 위대하지만 신은 아니라고 주장했습니다. 그의 발언은 폭풍을 불러일으켰습니다. 그는 30년 동안 신학교에 다시 초대받지 못했습니다. 그는 강의, 수필, 시를 통해 하나님에 관한 것을 포함하여 자신의 생각을 계속해서 표현했습니다.
에머슨에게 신은 칼빈주의자들의 엄한 재판관도 아니었고 이신론자들의 먼 시계 제작자도 아니었습니다. 에머슨은 신이 자연을 통해 계시된다고 믿었습니다. 그의 영국 낭만주의 동시대인들처럼 에머슨은 인간, 자연, 신 사이의 직접적인 연결을 보았습니다. 역사가 그랜트 바커(Grant Wacker)는 에머슨의 믿음을 다음과 같이 설명합니다. "신은 영, 이상, 생명의 숨결로 가장 잘 이해되었습니다. 모든 곳에서 그리고 항상 신성한 임재의 무진장한 힘으로 세상을 채우고 있습니다. 신은 대기만큼이나가깝고 '날리는 클로버와 내리는 비'만큼.친밀합니다.'"
Unlike most American intellectuals of his day, Emerson garnered considerable fame in Europe, and he exerted significant influence on later generations of theosophists, religious environmentalists and New Agers.
Late in life, Emerson began to lose his memory and stopped making public appearances. He died in April 1882 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Mass., not far from his home.RELATED LINKS
The Divinity School Address
Emerson's Essays
Transcendentalism: The American Novel (American Masters/PBS)
