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The Role Of Transcendentalism In America

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Transcendentalism is defined as any philosophy based on the principles of reality being discovered by the study of the thought process. It is an ideal literary and philosophical movement during the middle of the 19th century. Transcendentalism in America was a very important movement philosophically and in terms of literature as it flourished during this time. It originally began as a reform movement in a church, which displayed the ideas of William Ellery Channing, those ideas being a permanently present God and a significant instinctive thought. This idea was based on monism which is believing that there is one God. The original meeting group of the Transcendentalist Club was called “Symposium,” which honored Plato, someone who he became extremely interested in. Transcendentalism in America is practically a kind of …show more content…

Transcendentalists believed that intuition overpowered knowledge that was learned by experiencing it in the world. This became a pathway to finding oneself through nature. Both in Hinduism and in Buddhism there is a belief of being reborn until they are entirely pure. Transcendentalism is based off four general points which are self-reliance, individual conscience, intuition over reason, and the unification of all nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists became fascinated by Hinduism and went further beyond their literature and thoughts. Emerson incorporated many ideas and principles from Hinduism and Buddhism into Transcendentalism, as he examined Hindu and Buddhist writings before developing the movement. He looked at his own assumptions and thoughts about the writings and felt that a God who cared and loved humanity would not have led so many humans awry. Thinking like this, Emerson believed that these documents must have held some truth which caused him to look at Hinduism and Buddhism for

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