Transcendentalism is a philosophy that says that a higher kind of knowledge is achievable by human reason. This idea was first developed by the Greek Philosopher Plato, who believed that through reason absolute goodness is achievable. Ralph Waldo Emerson further developed this idea in America in the early 1800's. The common thinking of the day was the "fire and brimstone" preaching of Calvinism, which stated that a select few of the "inherently evil man" will awake to God and be saved. Religion offers answers to difficult questions, but those answers are sometimes hard to understand. Emerson began his career as a preacher, but ended up offering America an alternate choice to Calvinism, Transcendentalism. Emerson, in his essay "Nature," points to nature as a catalyst to understand the unknowns of life. As Emerson said, "Nature in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but also the process and the result." No longer is knowledge something blessed upon the few but knowledge is out there waiting to be understood. No light will shine upon man from heaven making him good, but man is born good with the resources in Gods real gift, nature, to help him see certain truths. There are answers in the sunset, rivers, fields, and everything else on earth.
One must use his innate principals to find these answers. Five years after Emerson wrote "Nature," he wrote "Self-Reliance" where intuition is seen as the key to unlock higher knowledge. The answers are in nature, and we must trust our interpretations, views, and thoughts to fully understand them. No one else can understand for us. Emerson begins "Self-Reliance" with this statement: "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance: that imitation is suicide: that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion: that the wide universe is full of good..." This essay stresses the idea that it is best to be an individual who sees things with his own eyes. Being like people who were great is not the way to make yourself great. Instead, like the famous people in history, being yourself is the best way to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the connection between nature and the individual human soul. Nature is something to be viewed in a religious light. It enters one's mind and enlightens it and is always there for the next philosopher who seeks knowledge. Trust your own thought and convictions because being different is good, being different is what makes it possible to be great.
Works Cited:
Boller, Paul. American Transcendentalism. New York: Capricorn Books, 1974.
Emerson, Ralph. Nature. Ed. George McMichael. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.
Emerson, Ralph. Self-Reliance. Ed. George McMichael. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.
Goddard, Harold. Studies In New England Transcendentalism. New York: Hillary House Publishers, 1960.
Eric Goodman