What Is The Relevance Of Transcendentalism

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Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote American Scholar during the period of transdentalism in 1840-1860 which emerged after romanticism. Transcendentalism dominated the thinking of the American Renaissance, the period before the Civil War where new literary and philosophical forms flourished, and its resonances vibrated through American life well into the 20th century. In one way or another our most creative minds were drawn into its thrall, attracted not only to its practicable messages of confident self-identity, spiritual progress and social justice, but also by its aesthetics, which celebrated, in landscape and mindscape, the immense grandeur of the American soul.As Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, (1948) states that independence is the freedom …show more content…

In The American Scholar, Emerson (1834) argued that man should see nature as opposite of the soul and nature is the measure for man to his achievement, knowing themselves and move over and also he stated “to young mind everything is individual, stands by itself.” Emerson therefore seemed to define equality that America should acquire to be independent from Europe. To that Jefferson (cited by Gottesman, and Parker 1979) stated “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their rights that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” However, Jefferson means equal in possessing a moral sense which is not only man’s highest faculty but the one that is equal to all men and it makes people to know about human rights and goal of human virtue. Emerson in The American Scholar (1834) stated “by and by it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature, then three, then three thousand and so…” in this section he defines to say that every man is individual and that man has the right to have equality in society. According to Hole’s (2001) observation, Americans are also distinctive in the degree to which they believe in the ideal, as stated in their Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal." Although they sometimes violate the ideal in their daily lives, particularly in matters of interracial relationships, Americans have a deep faith that in some fundamental way all people (at least all American people) are of equal value, and no one is born superior to anyone else. Thus, it is better to know yourself through studying nature and find equality to gain

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