The Transcendentalist Paperback – 5 December 2013
by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings
Kindle $3.20
30 pages
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Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Transcendentalist is one of the essays he wrote while establishing the doctrine of American Transcendentalism. The lecture was read at the Masonic Temple in Boston, Massachusetts in January 1842. The work begins by contrasting materialists and idealists. Emerson laments the absence of "old idealists." He goes on to outline the fundamental beliefs and characteristics of the New England Transcendentalists. He discusses the nature of epistemology and the debate between Locke and Kant on Imperative forms and Transcendental forms, and discusses perception and reality in a blatantly Platonic sense. He says that solitude is a state of being that should be encouraged, for it allows humanity to achieve a higher level of alignment with nature and prevents the contamination that one encounters within a society. Henry David Thoreau embodied the majority of these characteristics, except for neglecting to take action against the government. Thoreau was a staunch abolitionist; his home was a stop on the underground railroad. He was actively subverting the government, but Emerson admitted that there was no perfect Transcendentalist. Emerson created a perfect, ideal archetype for the Transcendentalist, but also realized that it would be adapted to fit imperfect humans in an imperfect world. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence" Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays - Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 - represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.
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The Transcendentalist
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
3.92 · Rating details · 105 ratings · 13 reviews
pamphlet, 10 pages
Published 2000 by Burning Man Books
Average rating3.92 · Rating details · 105 ratings · 13 reviews
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Tatum
Feb 23, 2012Tatum
Ralph Waldo Emerson never claimed to be a simple person. His philosophies were riddled with genius thought and explorations into the minds of the individual and society. During the rise of Transcendentalism in the mid-nineteenth century, his essays and poems became known as an unintentional catalyst for the pacifistic propaganda of the ideology, and soon enough he was noted “The Father of the Transcendentalist Movement.” In the essay “The Transcendentalist,” which was originally a lecture read at the Masonic Temple in Boston in January 1843, Emerson outlined his views on the new concept of a really old way of thinking.
In his essay, Emerson seemed to want to halt all confusion and question as to just what a Transcendentalist thinks and is. He opens with the thought provoking idea that there are only two types of people in the world: materialists and Idealists. Materialists deal with the “finality of the senses”; they only think in data and experiences, and believe only in “the animal wants of man,” which gives the sect a very gruff and Neanderthal tone. But Emerson argues that, on the other hand, the Idealists think in consciousness and except that the things they simply observe are more than themselves. At first, I found regretfully that I identified more with the former sect--I had secretly wanted to comprehend Emerson on a more intimate level. But as I read on, I realized that it isn’t hard to both admire his cleverness and correlate his thoughts with those of your own.
It didn’t take me long to realize that our friend Ralph was an atheist. The transparency must have had something to do with the bereavement of many of his family, including his wife and mother, before the modern drinking age. His quoting and admiring of Condillac when he said, “Though we should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go out of ourselves; it is always our own thought that we perceive,” is when I got a sour taste in my mouth. I had hoped Emerson would have taken a more secular approach to his philosophy, but it is unreasonable to ask for such. Transcendentalism and religion were always bound to contradict.
Besides emphasizing the need for self-reliance and self-propagation, Emerson seems to be arguing against critiques of Transcendentalism, as if the Transcendentalists were being criticized. This is when he gets to be a little arrogant. If the complex and sometimes disorienting diction wasn’t enough of a hint, his generalization of society and implications of imbecility are a sure bet. He goes so far as to claim that non-Transcendentalists are basically incapable of intuitive thought. Emerson also goes in depth to defend the natural unsociability and reticent lifestyle of such thinkers. He condescendingly treats society as a single prejudice individual, saying of his kind’s introverted tendencies: “Society, to be sure, does not like this very well...it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.”
It is admittedly hard to look past such deplorable opinion and see the motive behind his madness, so to speak. Though on one’s own behalf, of course--Emerson is astonishingly good at weaving delicately formed allusions and parables to create a wholesome suggestion about life. I even found influences from existentialist philosophy: “Yet, what is my faith? What am I? What but a thought of serenity and independence, an abode in the deep blue sky?” It seems that he was channeling the views of his posterity--Camus, Sartre, Voltaire--before their time, once again pioneering in the field of individualistic doctrine. Furthermore, Emerson elaborates on the Transcendentalist belief of the futility of labor (Well of course, they’re waiting for the Universe to call to them to work!) and the necessity of “real men” and the return of the “old Idealists” of a generation ago, because apparently they all left, only to be melancholically reincarnated into Emerson himself. The great literary work--a term used non-sarcastically--concludes with the declaration of immortality for Transcendentalist thought. A tall order for one man’s assumption of a whole generation’s philosophy, but it’s held up pretty well so far.
My opinion of Emerson’s work is perennially mixed. For one, it was not light reading. I tend to prefer books that are good both with a shallow eye and through literary scrutiny, but “The Transcendentalist” needs solely the latter. I enjoyed the overall intelligence of the essay; Emerson was no doubt a strong orator. But after reading, I couldn’t shake the unsettling nature of his pompous and belittling attacks on the “Materialists” of the world, a group I happen to be a part of. The one thing holding me back from simply writing this book off as a flop was that it made me think. Even if I am the Democrat to Emerson’s Republican, I still identified with the innate urgency to find structure and understanding in one’s life. There are worse things to believe in besides the sole dependency of one’s own consciousness, right? Nevertheless, I feel that a work by Ralph Waldo Emerson is absolutely critical for the repertoire of any literary junkie, aspiring philosopher, or classicist. But as for leisure reading? I’d rather pick up a Fitzgerald or a John Green novel any day of the week. (less)
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Doug H
Nov 21, 2015Doug H rated it it was amazing
Dear Yann Martel,
Your simultaneously inspiring and confounding The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel made me want to read this simultaneously inspiring and confounding 10 page essay. I almost understood some of it and I'm almost on to understanding some of your own literary motives now. Not quite, but almost.
Peace,
Doug
"Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute, or a subscription of stock, for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry, for a new house or a larger business, for a political party, or the division of an estate, — will you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable? Soon these improvements and mechanical inventions will be superseded; these modes of living lost out of memory; these cities rotted, ruined by war, by new inventions, by new seats of trade, or the geologic changes: — all gone, like the shells which sprinkle the seabeach with a white colony to-day, forever renewed to be forever destroyed. But the thoughts which these few hermits strove to proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, not only by what they did, but by what they forbore to do, shall abide in beauty and strength, to reorganize themselves in nature, to invest themselves anew in other, perhaps higher endowed and happier mixed clay than ours, in fuller union with the surrounding system."
- Emerson
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Joseph Knecht
Apr 17, 2020Joseph Knecht rated it really liked it
Shelves: emerson, philosophy
One of the most compelling defenses of transcendental thought. Emerson claims that all materialists see the world through their senses, and what their senses see is what matters to them. But the idealists, see no physical matter, and the world matters less to those who only see ideas. But what happens to those who had transcendent both matters and ideas? Where will these Transcendentalists live?
Will they live in society, or on the outskirts? Will they live in the world, or outside of it?
Every ...more
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Bernie Gourley
Feb 22, 2022Bernie Gourley rated it it was amazing
Shelves: wisdom
In this short essay (about ten pages,) Emerson lays out an argument for Idealism over Materialism, and then contends that it’s reasonable to excuse oneself from the economic and civic aspects of society in favor of a simple life of introspection. [e.g. As Thoreau did in his years at Walden Pond.]
Emerson opens by suggesting that Transcendentalism is just Idealism by a different name. Idealism being a philosophical stance which puts consciousness at the fore while proposing that there is someth ...more
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Hareem Ch
Oct 22, 2019Hareem Ch rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. (less)
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Marts (Thinker)
Mar 22, 2019Marts (Thinker) rated it really liked it
Shelves: philosophy
This essay is from a lecture presented by Emerson in 1842 specific to the doctrine of transcendentalism. He begins with a comparison between materialists and idealists then goes on to outline transcendentalists characteristics expounding on the likes of epistemology and the benefits of solitude... You can read the essay here: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engwe...
...more
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b
Aug 11, 2020b rated it did not like it
Bad. I don’t like this man.
(Another one I read from a different edition but I want cred so I’m logging it separately.)
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Moneeza Rafiq
Oct 21, 2019Moneeza Rafiq rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction-academic, philosophical-thought-provoking
Definitely an essay that requires at lot of attention, and yet makes good arguments.
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Alex
Jun 08, 2009Alex rated it it was amazing
Shelves: inspiration-for-my-temperament-book
What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842. Idealists; ... founding... on consciousness; perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell...the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture...the idealist contends that his way of thinking is in higher nature.
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The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own.
---The Transcendentalist from Lectures, published as part of Nature; Addresses and Lectures Ralph Waldo Emerson A Lecture read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842 (less)
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Braden Layne
Feb 18, 2015Braden Layne rated it really liked it
Shelves: philosophy
This is a great read, but it is also a very difficult read. It is something that should be broken down into small bits and studied, rather than simply read as though it were a story, if one wishes to fully grasp its concepts.
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torque
Oct 23, 2015torque rated it liked it · review of another edition
I could follow the beginning, then I lost it.
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Craven
Jun 27, 2008Craven rated it liked it
A quick read from Raymond Soulard Jr.'s Burning Man Books. It's kind of cool as a period piece and it holds some value today. I don't know, I was glad to read it. ===
