Transcendentalism Movement

Transcendentalism Movement

The Initiative of the Transcendentalists Movement
The eighteenth century is often characterized as the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. Spurred by the work of many seventeenth-century thinkers—such as scientist Galileo and political theorist John Locke—the writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment valued reason over faith. Unlike the Puritans, they had little interest in the hereafter, believing instead in the power of reason and science to further human progress. They spoke of a social contract that forms the basis of government. Above all, they believed that people are by nature good, not evil. A perfect society seemed to them to be more than just an idle dream. The American statesmen of the Revolutionary period were themselves figures of the Enlightenment. No history of the period would be complete without mention of the ideas and writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. These Americans not only expressed the ideas of the Age of Reason but also helped to put them spectacularly into practice. These writers of the revolutionary era anticipated the transcendentalist by pursing motivation for A NEW MAN following the concepts of the age of reason politically, historically, and socially based on the civil disobedience.

Most, if not all, of these writers were influenced by the transcendental movement then flourishing in New England. Emerson and Thoreau were the best-known Transcendentalists, but the ferment of transcendental ideas affected many other writers.   Transcendentalism demands careful definition, yet it is very hard to define. It has many facets, many sources, and encompasses a range of beliefs whose specific principles depend on the individual writer or thinker. The term itself and some of the ideas came from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In his Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Kant defines the “transcendental” as the understanding a person gains intuitively because it lies beyond direct experience....