WEBVTT - How Did Transcendentalism Shape America? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.880 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:13.600 Volbebam here. Today, a lot of Americans feel strongly about 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:17.720 issues such as racial justice, women's rights, and protecting the environment, 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.560 and many believe in the power of nonviolent civil disobedience 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:26.520 to achieve progress towards a better fairer world. And while 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:29.440 not all of us realize it, in many ways, we 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.640 take after a group of mid nineteenth century New England 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.320 intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Throw and 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:42.360 Margaret Fuller, among others, who espoused philosophy known as transcendentalism. 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.960 The Transcendentalist movement, which emerged in the mid eighteen thirties, 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:51.879 had a straightforward idea at its core. Adherents argued that 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:56.080 every person possesses the light of capital d divine truth, 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.640 then should look within themselves defined it, rather than simply 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.640 conform to whatever the powers that be want them to think. 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:08.280 But from that notion of spiritual self reliance, a lot 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.880 of other ideas blossomed, from reverence for nature to the 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:16.720 view that everyone is entitled freedom and equality. That led 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:20.399 Transcendentalists to become an important part of other activist movements 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.240 in America at the time that sought to abolish slavery 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:28.480 and achieve women's suffrage. For example, it was inspired in 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:31.200 part by thinkers on the other side of the Atlantic. 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:35.480 The actual name of the movement, Transcendental, came from German 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:40.160 philosopher Emmanuel Kant's seventeen eighty eight manuscript Critique of Practical Reason. 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.880 Emerson was a great admirer of English Romantic writers William 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:48.280 Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both of whom he met 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:52.320 when he traveled to Europe, and Frederick Henry Hedge, a 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:56.200 Unitarian minister who studied in Germany, brought German philosophy back 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:59.760 to America with him, along with a number of other 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:04.200 interested writers, politicians, and thinkers at large. They began meeting 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:09.320 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in eighteen thirty six. Before the article 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:11.680 this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke via 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:15.720 email with Laura Dasso Walls, the William P. And Hazel B. White, 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.480 professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.320 author of the acclaimed twenty seventeen biography Henry David Threaux 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.920 A life, as she said, all through the war years, 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.560 the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the War of eighteen twelve, 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:34.320 Americans found it virtually impossible to go to Europe or 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.040 even to access European books. But after the peace Treaty 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:41.680 of eighteen fifteen, suddenly traveled to Europe was wide open again. 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.360 A whole generation of ambitious young American men sailed to 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.960 Europe to continue their education at European universities, above all 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.840 in Germany. The books and ideas and teachings they brought 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:57.480 with them Kant Girder, the Humboldt Brothers, Samuel Taylor, Coleridge, Wordsworth, 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.600 Byron and Shelley, and Don and on in used American 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:04.000 colleges and universities with an exciting new wave of European 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.960 literature and philosophy. It was a wave which swiftly spread 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.920 into the popular imagination, inspiring a widespread confidence that a 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.800 new age was born, an age in which the individual 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.880 could intuit truth for him or herself by an inward 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:23.880 search for meaning. Yet, a year after the group first met, 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.640 Emerson urged in his speech and later essay The American Scholar, 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:31.840 for Americans to stop looking to Europe for inspiration and imitation, 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:37.880 and to be themselves. Walls said, Transcendentalism became the first 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:42.640 distinctly American philosophy because it fused several different currents, all 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.600 of which converged only here in the US. So even 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.720 though the underlying philosophy first emerged in Europe, it was 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:52.520 in America that it took hold as a philosophy one 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:57.480 could actually commit to and live by. A One of 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.920 Transcendentalism's key influences was the religious faith of New England's Puritans, 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:05.320 who believed that every person stands before God and must 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:09.400 read the Bible for themselves, a Wall said, this gave 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:15.040 us the bedrock notion of individualism. Another important ingredient was 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.640 the American Revolution, which promoted a quality as an American ideal, 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:22.320 even if the new country didn't actually afford that status 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.960 to a lot of its people, including women, most people 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:30.720 of color, and the formerly enslaved a. Walls said. The Transcendentalists, 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:34.120 whose parents had grown up fighting the Revolution, believed it 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.440 was their turn to continue the revolution, that is, to 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:41.640 continue the political revolution by igniting it as an intellectual revolution. 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.400 Their small group became known as the Transcendental Club. They 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:51.280 eventually published a magazine, The Dial, which was edited by 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.360 Margaret Fuller. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was the business manager of 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:59.240 the magazine, and in eighteen sixty established the first English 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:04.040 language kindergar in the US. Later, some of the Transcendentalists 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:07.720 even created a short lived utopian community near Boston based 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.240 on their ideas, a brook farm whose residents shared the 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:17.080 agricultural work and operated a school. While the Transcendentalists were 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.599 a rebellious fringe, a lot of their ideas eventually became 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:25.320 an accepted part of the American mainstream. O. Walls explained, 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:30.160 as Emerson said, in self trust, all the virtues are comprehended. 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.080 This notion of self trust became the foundation for American 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:40.760 self reliance, another term coined by Emerson. Henry David Threaux, 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:45.720 a former schoolmaster turned poet and philosopher, bought into Transcendentalist 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:51.200 philosophical ideas and endeavored to live them. In eighteen forty five, 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.279 he built a cottage on Walden Pond on property owned 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.520 by Emerson, and spent several years living off the land, 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:03.159 meditating and contemplating nature. In eighteen forty six, Thereau stopped 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.560 paying taxes in protest against slavery and the US War 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:10.440 against Mexico. He was arrested by the local constable for 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:13.000 tax delinquency and spent a night in jail before a 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.960 benefactor paid off his debt. The experience led the Roe 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.599 to publish his influential essay Civil Disobedience, in which he 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.799 argued that people should defy the government rather than support 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:29.200 policies they saw as unjust. Thereau advocated nonviolent action, but 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.000 later penned a letter in support of the violent actions 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:36.280 of John Brown, who murdered unarmed pro slavery settlers in Kansas. 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:42.719 Owall said, Thereau gave us the classic examples a first 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.480 in his uniquely individualist form of social protest and civil disobedience, 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:50.280 and then in pursuing his utopian search for truth by 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.640 living in solitude at Walden Pond, a striking out alone 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:58.839 to enjoy an original relation to the universe. As Emerson said, 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.279 this original relation included the universe of human history, but 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:05.840 world literature, the world's religions, modern science, philosophy, all the 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:07.920 way back to the ancient Greeks play too. Above all, 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:12.240 but also famously the universe of the outer world or nature, 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:16.360 which the Transcendentalists regarded as the embodiment of divine reason, 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:22.320 hence the key to universal meaning. According to Walls, the 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:27.120 Transcendentalists quote interpreted truth not as something that one could 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:31.160 find single and static, but as something one lived, dynamic 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:37.800 and always evolving and changing. That unending search for the 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.160 truth also led the movement's members to become activists in 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:44.960 big causes of their day. The Transcendentalist belief that every 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:49.840 person carries God within themselves meant that politics, economics, organized religion, 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:54.640 and schools, all with tendencies to sort people into hierarchical ranks, 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:59.320 needed to be reformed or even overhauled. A Wall said 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:03.640 the American educational system was their first target. Education should 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.200 be free to all of all ages, men and women alike, 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:10.360 and all ethnicities, races, and creeds. Many of the Transcendentalists 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:14.040 were teachers, and several Bronze and Alcott, Elizabeth Peabody, and 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:18.600 thereaux A founded innovative progressive schools which embraced literacy and 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:25.240 education for everyone, including women and African Americans. Transcendentalists also 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:28.600 took up the fight against slavery. Walls said it was 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:31.440 led notably by women who took up the cause starting 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:34.600 in the eighteen thirties by founding anti slavery societies at 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:39.400 the local level and organizing anti slavery activism at all levels, local, regional, 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:45.440 and national. Some members acted as conductors on the Underground Railroad, 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.400 and a minister in the group, One Theodore Parker, not 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:52.240 only preached abolitionist sermons, but formed a vigilance committee to 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:55.280 protect free black people in Boston from Southerners there to 0:08:55.520 --> 0:09:02.160 catch freedom seekers and Dentalists were also early advocates for 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.760 women's rights. Margaret Fuller's eighteen forty five book Woman in 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:08.800 the Nineteenth Century contained what was for the time a 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:13.440 daring proclamation quote what woman needs is not as a 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:16.600 woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:19.840 as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:23.400 freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:28.400 her when we left our common home a. Fuller's influence 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:30.920 was felt three years later at the Seneca Falls Convention, 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.000 the conference that's widely recognized as the beginning of the 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:40.480 women's rights movement. The Transcendentalist movement eventually began to fade, 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.880 but its ideas never really went away and manifested into 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:47.960 later reform movements in the nineteen sixties and seventies, for example, 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:51.400 there was a resurgence of enthusiasm for throw as antiwar 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:54.760 activists found his ideas about resisting the power structure were 0:09:54.840 --> 0:10:00.200 highly relevant today. Climate activists argue that environmental PreTect action 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.760 and social justice for poor people and minority communities aren't 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:08.400 separate issues, but are actually inseparably linked. Another transcendentalist idea, 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:14.240 Wall said, interest in the Roe's ideas is stronger today 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.679 than ever before. Certainly, students in my own classes resonate 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:21.240 to his message more urgently than ever. They identify with 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:24.520 the Roe's fear that we're living lies of quiet desperation, 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:28.880 and many respond with intense hope to the solutions he offers. 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:32.760 For one reason, his is an individualist form of hope. 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.600 You can take on his ethical project by yourself, on 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.320 your own, no matter who you are or where you live. 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.840 In other words, he offers a sense that even today, 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:44.680 we can exert at least some control over our lives, 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.000 learn to live by a higher ethical standard, and so 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.480 at the least make our own lives better. A place 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:54.679 to start the ethical project of making all lives better. 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.720 Today's episode is based on the article what is Transcendentalism 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.360 and how did it change America? On HowStuffWorks dot Com 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.120 written by Patrick J. Kiger. Rain Stuff is production of 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:10.559 by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.880 is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts myheart Radio, 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.120 visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:18.199 to your favorite shows.