Editing Transcendentalism (section)

==Beliefs==
Transcendentalists are strong believers in the power of the individual and are primarily concerned with [[personal freedom]]. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the [[Romantics]], but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science.
===Transcendental knowledge===
Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy in principles based upon the German [[Romanticism]] of [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] and [[Friedrich Schleiermacher]]. Transcendentalism merged "[[English Romanticism|English]] and [[German Romanticism]], the [[Biblical criticism]] of Herder and Schleiermacher, the skepticism of [[David Hume|Hume]]",<ref name="Stanford"/> and the transcendental philosophy of [[Immanuel Kant]] (and of [[German idealism]] more generally), interpreting Kant's ''a priori'' categories as [[A priori knowledge|''a priori'' knowledge]]. Early transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with [[German philosophy]] in the original and relied primarily on the writings of [[Thomas Carlyle]], [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], [[Victor Cousin]], [[Germaine de Staël]], and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it. The transcendental movement can be described as an American outgrowth of English Romanticism.{{citation needed|date=December 2019}}

===Individualism===
Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions—particularly [[organized religion]] and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/understandingeme0000sack|url-access=registration|quote=institutions.|title=Understanding Emerson: 'The American Scholar' and His Struggle for Self-reliance|last1=Sacks|first1=Kenneth S.|last2=Sacks|first2=Professor Kenneth S.|date=2003|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=9780691099828|language=en}}</ref> They have faith that people are at their best when truly self-reliant and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community can form.{{Citation needed|date=November 2023}}

Even with this necessary individuality, transcendentalists also believe that all people are outlets for the "[[The Over-Soul|Over-Soul]]". Because the Over-Soul is one, this unites all people as one being.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Emerson|first1=Ralph Waldo|title=The Over-Soul|url=http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/oversoul.html|website=American Transcendentalism Web|access-date=13 July 2015|archive-date=16 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190416112312/http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/oversoul.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>{{Request quotation|date=July 2015}} Emerson alludes to this concept in the introduction of the ''[[The American Scholar|American Scholar]]'' address, "that there is One Man, – present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/amscholar.html|title=Emerson – 'The American Scholar'|website=transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu|access-date=2017-10-14|archive-date=2017-12-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171213134859/http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/amscholar.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> Such an ideal is in harmony with Transcendentalist individualism, as each person is empowered to behold within him or herself a piece of the divine Over-Soul.{{Citation needed|date=November 2023}}

In recent years, there has been a distinction made between individuality and [[individualism]]. Both advocate the unique capacity of the individual. Yet individualism is decidedly anti-government, whereas individuality sees all facets of society necessary, or at least acceptable for the development of the true individualistic person. Whether the Transcendentalists believed in individualism or individuality remains to be determined.

===Indian religions===
While firmly rooted in the western philosophical traditions of [[Platonism]], [[Neoplatonism]], and [[German idealism]], Transcendentalism was also directly influenced by [[Indian religions]].{{sfn|Versluis|1993}}{{sfn|Versluis|2001|p=3}}{{refn|group=note|Versluis: "In ''American Transcendentalism and Asian religions'', I detailed the immense impact that the Euro-American discovery of Asian religions had not only on European Romanticism, but above all, on American Transcendentalism. There I argued that the Transcendentalists' discovery of the [[Bhagavad-Gita]], the [[Vedas]], the [[Upanishads]], and other world scriptures was critical in the entire movement, pivotal not only for the well-known figures like Emerson and Thoreau, but also for lesser known figures like Samuel Johnson and William Rounsville Alger. That Transcendentalism emerged out of this new knowledge of the world's religious traditions I have no doubt."{{sfn|Versluis|2001|p=3}}}}  Thoreau in ''[[Walden]]'' spoke of the Transcendentalists' debt to Indian religions directly:
[[File:Henry David Thoreau 2.jpg|thumb|left|[[Henry David Thoreau]]]]
{{quote|In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the [[Bhagavad Gita|Bhagavat Geeta]], since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the [[Brahmin]], priest of [[Brahma]], and [[Vishnu]] and [[Indra]], who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the [[Vedas]], or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water-jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the [[Sacred waters|sacred water]] of the Ganges.<ref>Thoreau, Henry David. ''[[Walden]]''. Boston: Ticknor&Fields, 1854. p. 279. Print.</ref>|sign=|source=}}
In 1844, the first English translation of the [[Lotus Sutra]] was included in ''[[The Dial]]'', a publication of the New England Transcendentalists, translated from French by [[Elizabeth Peabody|Elizabeth Palmer Peabody]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Lopez|first1=Donald S. Jr.|title=The Life of the Lotus Sutra|journal=Tricycle Magazine|date=2016|issue=Winter|url=https://tricycle.org/magazine/lotus-sutra-history/|access-date=2017-11-09|archive-date=2022-01-28|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220128095709/https://tricycle.org/magazine/lotus-sutra-history/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Emerson|first1=Ralph Waldo|last2=Fuller|first2=Margaret|last3=Ripley|first3=George|title=The Preaching of Buddha|journal=The Dial|date=1844|volume=4|page=391|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VnsAAAAAYAAJ|access-date=2017-11-09|archive-date=2024-02-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240208234705/https://books.google.com/books?id=VnsAAAAAYAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Idealism===
Transcendentalists differ in their interpretations of the practical aims of will. Some adherents link it with utopian social change; [[Orestes Brownson|Brownson]], for example, connected it with early [[socialism]], but others consider it an exclusively individualist and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter. In his 1842 lecture "[[The Transcendentalist]]", he suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice: 
{{quote|You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental ''party''; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of no one but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.  ... Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the [[Saturnalia]] or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish.}}

=== Importance of nature ===
Transcendentalists have a deep gratitude and appreciation for nature, not only for aesthetic purposes, but also as a tool to observe and understand the structured inner workings of the natural world.<ref name=":0" /> Emerson emphasizes the Transcendental beliefs in the holistic power of the natural landscape in ''[[Nature (essay)|Nature]]:''<blockquote>In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, – no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Emerson |first1=Ralph Waldo |title=Nature |url=https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/naturetext.html#1 |website=American Transcendentalism Web |access-date=2019-04-15 |archive-date=2019-09-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190903162823/https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/naturetext.html#1 |url-status=live }}</ref>
</blockquote>Influenced by Emerson and the importance of nature, [[Charles Stearns Wheeler]] built a shanty at [[Flints Pond|Flint's Pond]] in 1836. Considered the first Transcendentalist outdoor living experiment, Wheeler used his shanty during his summer vacations from Harvard from 1836 to 1842. Thoreau stayed at Wheeler's shanty for six weeks during the summer of 1837, and got the idea that he wanted to build his own cabin (later realized at Walden in 1845).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Eidson |first=John Olin |title=Charles Stearns Wheeler – Friend of Emerson |year=1951}}</ref> The exact location of the Wheeler shanty site was discovered by Jeff Craig in 2018, after a five-year search effort.<ref name="Landrigan">{{Cite web |last=Landrigan |first=Leslie |date=2021-10-22 |title=Charles Stearns Wheeler, the Transcendentalist Pioneer Who Inspired Walden |url=https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/charles-stearns-wheeler/ |access-date=2023-09-09 |website=New England Historical Society |language=en-US |archive-date=2023-05-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230508172946/https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/charles-stearns-wheeler/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
The conservation of an undisturbed natural world is also extremely important to the Transcendentalists. The idealism that is a core belief of Transcendentalism results in an inherent skepticism of [[capitalism]], [[Manifest destiny|westward expansion]], and [[Technological and industrial history of the United States|industrialization]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Nature's nation|last=Miller |first=Perry |date=1967|publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press|isbn=0674605500|location=Cambridge, MA|oclc=6571892}}</ref> As early as 1843, in ''[[Summer on the Lakes]],'' Margaret Fuller noted that "the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron",<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11526/11526-h/11526-h.htm|title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of Summer on the Lakes, by S. M. Fuller|website=www.gutenberg.org|access-date=2019-04-15|archive-date=2019-10-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191004034339/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11526/11526-h/11526-h.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> and in 1854, in ''Walden,'' Thoreau regarded the [[History of rail transportation in the United States|trains being built across America's landscape]] as a "winged horse or fiery dragon" that "sprinkle[d] all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm#chap18|title=Walden, by Henry David Thoreau|website=www.gutenberg.org|access-date=2019-04-15|archive-date=2019-04-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190411155614/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm#chap18|url-status=live}}</ref>