Talk:Transcendentalism

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Contents

[edit] History and Philosophy

I think the article needs more on the history of Transcendentalism, and should be divided into sections, one of philosophy and one on the history itself. - Pingveno 20:37, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What's the relavance of linking "transcendental meditation" from the artcle? They appear to have little in common besides a name.

There are many views on this topic and a lot of it started in the early to mid 19 century.

I think the link to Kant and other hard philosophers and philosophy should be de-emphisized. Trancendetalism though having philosophical pretensions was primarily a literary movement. It was not a product of german idealism so much as german romanticism and romanticism generally. The idealist philosophers influenced a lot of romantics aside from just the New England crew. This is a common tension in views of Emerson, and some others like Theraue, and Carlyle, they wrote in a tone that might be interpreted as philosophical but did not call themselves philosophers. Emerson called himself always a poet. He attacked philosophy in favor of the poetic outlook. Some like Stanley Cavell have tried to say Emerson was a philosopher, but I think they are in the distinct minority, and change the meaning of philosopher to do so. The way the article is now leaves the immpresion that these were just a bunch of ametuer, "table top" philosophers. I think the reality is that they were a very dynamic literary movement that in many ways founded American culture. By the way theirs a nice quote from Charles Dickens in his notes on America which was mostly a critical look, that talks about the Boston Trancendentalist, and ends with him saying "If I lived in Boston I would be a trancendentalist too." Or something like that. You could google it.--Case 21:16, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that the narrow definition of philosophy which would include Kant as "hard" and exclude (e.g.) Emerson is a distinctively twentieth-century invention. The standard anthology The Transcendentalists, edited by the intellectual historian Perry Miller, is instructive on this topic, portraying Transcendentalism as primarily theological-philosophical rather than literary. And the claim that Transcendentalism is a literary movement founders on the extremely thin literary production of the movement anyway (especially if we use "literary" in the way the 19th C. authors would have understood it, as referring to poetry and fiction), as compared to their prodigious and excellent criticism, scholarship, lectures and essays. So I don't think it's out of place to characterize it as a theological and philosophical movement as much as, or more than, a literary one (and the Kant reference is primarily an explanation of the name, anyway). But the article can certainly be improved in many ways, so feel free to make whatever changes seem appropriate. -- Rbellin 04:12, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)



[edit] Would like some help

Does anyone know what kind of relation the Transcendentalists philosophy has with Nietzsche's? Are they antagonistic? As I'm not familiarized with the latter, I'd really much like to know. Edited: The Individual 00:52 2/V/05

Nietzsche read Emerson and was influenced by him to some degree. Beyond that, matters are less settled, and there's not a whole lot of scholarship on the relationship. There's a book called Nietzsche and Emerson: An Elective Affinity, ISBN 0821410377, that you might look at for more on the relationship. -- Rbellin|Talk 00:41, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] recent changes

I have reverted two recent changes to the article. First, User:Euhlig changed the lead paragraph to the present tense, which is inappropriate in a historical article (and this article has occasionally attracted Transcendentalist-revival POV-pushers). This article is about the early-to-mid-19th-century movement in American thought, not any current movement referring to it. Second, User:Kenosis deleted a description of some of Transcendentalism's founding motivations ("Transcendentalism originated as a protest against the general state of American culture and society, and particularly the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church which was taught at Harvard Divinity School.") and appended an edit comment describing this as "erroneous stretch of imagination". It's certainly not patently untrue, and in fact this is a generalization of a kind found in many scholarly works on Transcendentalism -- so I can see no justification for the deletion. -- Rbellin|Talk 14:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unitarianism

Do you have an outside source for the assertion that the transcendentalism was founded due to problems with Unitarianism? I know little about transcendentalism, except for the fact that it and its founders are particularly revered by the Unitarian church, which I grew up in. You can hardly visit one of them without finding an "Emerson Hall", or something of the like. And most of them are listed under categories like "american unitarians". My first urge was just to edit that part out, but I saw you'd reverted it before so I thought I'd ask. J.S. Nelson 09:45, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

If you know little about Transcendentalism, it's good you resisted the urge to start deleting things from the article. I'm not sure how you get to "problems with Unitarianism" from this sentence, but the fact that Transcendentalism originated partly as a protest against Unitarian theology is as virtually uncontested as historical assertaions get. Take a look at any scholarly work on Transcendentalism (say, Perry Miller's The Transcendentalists, or Barbara Packer's essay in the Cambridge History of American Literature) for a source. -- Rbellin|Talk 15:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Just making sure; I thought it was perhaps a weirdly formatted sentence because the Unitarians are so fond of the transcendentalists (and learning more about the origins of Transcendentalism, I see to what great extent the Unitarian theology I grew up with has embraced the concerns of the transcendentalists.) To clarify, I meant "problems with Unitarianism" as in "problems they had with Unitarianism" which I would assume lay behind their protest. J.S. Nelson 06:49, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tense

Why is "transcendentalism" strictly historical? My dictionaries define the word as "a philosophy that emphasizes..." and "any philosophy based upon the doctrine that..." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Euhlig (talk • contribs).

First of all, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The general philosophical sense of the word is, quite properly, noted in Wiktionary, and other uses of "transcendentalism" in philosophy are further described in the Wikipedia articles on transcendence (philosophy) and transcendental idealism. Those are not the subjects of this article. As the second sentence of the article says, this article is about New England Transcendentalism. -- Rbellin|Talk 22:50, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
For the sake of clarity, I've also added a disambiguation header to the top of the article. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:10, 11 August 2006 (UTC)