Emerson's Transcendentalism, By Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American lecturer, poet, and essayist who lead the Transcendentalist movement around the mid-19th century and changed the social values around him. Emerson wrote many essays about the value of individually and believed that thinking for one’s self and trusting originals ideas, and help reach inclusive truth that will benefit the society as a whole. Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803. His father, William Emerson who was the pastor in church and his mother, Ruth Haskins. On 1811, when Emerson was the age of eight, his father past away due to having stomach cancer. So later on he was raised by his mother and Mary Mood Emerson, his aunt. His aunt always encouraged on his independent thinking. …show more content…

He created Nature in 1836, which was his first edition. In the essay he put forward the support of Transcendentalism. He believed that one can learn to understand reality by studying nature. It emphasizes the meaning of nature, nature’s symbolism, and all nature forms toward highest expression. It’s divided into an introduction and eight chapters. In the introduction he set to accept the knowledge and culture of the past instead of experiencing God and Nature towards. In Chapter 1: Nature, it shows that going out in the nature and leaving reality or society behind can make you feel connected to nature or become one. The next four Chapters are: Commodity, Beauty, Language, and Discipline. In those four chapters he discuss how man handle nature to achieve insight into the working of the universe. In Chapter 6: Idealism, he questions whether nature exists or not. Such as if God created human, or human created God. Essentially it’s science vs. nature. Likely will never know or maybe in the next generation they will discover the truth. In Chapter 7: Spirit, he outlook a theory of nature and man must allow continuous or dynamic apprehension. And finally the last Chapter: Prospects, he points out that only men, or humankind, apply balanced understanding to nature. Also he identifies the inequality created by man’s loss of an earlier sense of the spiritual meaning and purpose of nature. “Nature, and God, and humankind itself, is up to us and

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