Transcendentalism In Emerson's Nature And Self-Reliance

Emerson’s Nature and Self-Reliance, published in 1836 and 1841 respectively, were two important pieces of American literature that marked the beginning of Transcendentalism. Considering the historical context, Nature more directly echoed the Second Great Awakening, a religious movement that granted individuals the freedom of connecting with the divine. Self-Reliance was, in addition, a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. He worried that the factories might take away the individuality of the workers and replace it with order and uniformity. Emerson’s philosophy was his teaching to the individuals who lived in the nineteenth century America, a place in time of “new lands, new men, new thoughts” that at times fostered and at times …show more content…
Of these two, Nature came first and was more philosophical, presenting a “philosophy of insight and not of tradition.” Emerson advocated for a new philosophy which relied upon one’s own exploration to seek the truth and divinity. He said that “every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put.” The answer to the philosophical questions according to him were encrypted in everyone’s own experience, which meant that everyone had a unique answer that could only be found out by himself. Emerson also made it clear that we should examine the nature for the answers, as he wrote, “nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design.” Nature expressed truth and divinity directly, and therefore men should seek to connect with it. Examples of that would be, as he explained, “in the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man.” Emerson believed that we could and should form an intimate relation with the nature and be inspired and delighted by …show more content…
The industrial revolution around the late 1700s to the early 1800s made the transition from hand production to machine production and gave rise to the factory system. It affected every one’s life hugely. On one hand, it was a period of tremendous progress as the advance of technology drastically increased our capacity to produce goods and harvest energy, led to the creation of railroad and telephone, and in general increased wealth and population. On the other hand, however, as Emerson was aware and concerned of, the factory system that included more and more workers posed threat to his belief of Transcendentalism. Workers’ intellectual and spiritual freedom was severely compromised by the unity and order necessary to ensure efficiency, “[t]he reality of factory life, however, involved strict work rules and long hours of tedious, repetitive work. At Lowell, for example, workers could be fined for lateness or misconduct, such as talking on the job, and the women’s morals in the boarding houses were strictly guarded.” As an individualist, Emerson believed that men and women were at their best when independent, but factories systematically undermined the practice of individualism not only by directly imposing order and authority, but also indirectly by taking away time for the workers to reflect