Before one examines Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy of transcendentalism, one must first know what transcendentalism is. Transcendentalism, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is a philosophy which says that thought and spiritual things are more real than ordinary human experience and material things. William Strauss and Neil Howe do a good job of addressing this in their appropriately named Strauss-Howe theory which states that there is a recurring generational cycle in society. This cycle starts with a “high”, this stage occurs immediately after a “crisis” (the most recent “high” being from the end of World War Two to the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy) where institutions are strong, and individualism is weak.
