Transcendentalist Views on the Meaning of Life

Only a few variations of carbon molecules truly separate organisms from objects. Yet this seemingly straightforward science ignores why humans, in all of their complexity, stem from just random happenstance, revealing that the science of life does not necessarily expose its meaning. For that answer, famed Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau look within the self, rather than a laboratory. In his Self-Reliance essay, Emerson hypothesizes the meaning to be in independence; whereas, Thoreau, from his venture in the woods in Walden, theorizes it to be in simplicity. Writing Civil Disobedience later on, Thoreau would require that simple life be free of an intrusive government. But these discrepancies in detail should not mask the men’s fundamental advice: merely following intuition can achieve a meaningful existence.

That intuition must be first accepted by the person holding it, or else he or she risks living to another’s wishes.

Rather, he should always protest for his autonomy. Thoreau expands on this subject in Civil Disobedience. After clarifying his beliefs that a government is best when it governs little, he questions the idea of government itself: “Must the citizen ever for a moment...resign his conscience to the legislator?...[W]e should be men first, and subjects afterwards” (Civil Disobedience 171). Placing the individual over the government, Thoreau shows his passion for the self. That person’s actions may go awry, but, at least, the person still has the right to learn from his or her wrongs. Thoreau equates a meaningful existence with unyielding trust in a person’s inner voice. Without this voice being nurtured, an individual loses his or her personhood. Such unwavering loyalty to the self best characterizes the Transcendental ideal life, where one only needs to follow intuition to be