The Transcendentalist

Henry David Thoreau once said, “Things do not change we change,” explaining his Transcendentalist stance on life’s affairs and unknowingly foreshadowing the change he would cause in future revolutionaries. Thoreau was one of the central figures in Transcendentalism, and an ardent believer in the core principles of it. He, along with the other Transcendentalists attempted to understand the life’s relationships through this movement of thought and individualism. Thoreau played a key role in the…

could understand the nature of the universe through reason and direct observation. The first Transcendentalists disagreed. They argued discovering truths about life necessitated personal effort toward a relationship with God. Contrary to the Unitarians, they believed true knowledge about the universe could only come from intuition found in the human mind and nature. Emerson explained Transcendentalists are those who display “ the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them [...] all…

McCandless is a transcendentalist, from the modern age, which means he enjoys the simplicity of life and deliberate living or living life with intentions. McCandless goes into the wild with the aspiration of finding himself through nature. In the eyes of a transcendentalist, they believe that natures role in life is important. Nonconformity, Self- reliance, deliberate living, confidence, and nature are key aspects of a transcendental lifestyle. When describing transcendentalist, the word…

that every individual can possess the ability to discover a higher truth on their own. Transcendentalists believe that human experience and high knowledge thinking is more effective than any human reasoning. These people strongly disagree that there is a reason behind our environment and behaviors. Unlike Puritans and their belief that salvation and goodness is dependent on acts and charity, Transcendentalists believe all of nature and humans possess a natural goodness to them. This movement is…

The Grizzly man also known as Timothy Treadwell thought he could be one with nature by going to Alaska and living with bears for 13 years. Some would consider him a transcendentalist like the writers Emmerson and Thoreau. Some would argue he is just a nut case playing with bears just like Thoreau was a loser who played in Emmerson’s back yard only to move back with his parents. Thoreau was so into nature he only lived about 2 miles from town. Some would consider Treadwell and Thoreau very…

Nature,” and Terry Eagleton’s Essay on “What is Literature” both show different styles of writing and different philosophies. Emerson being a transcendentalist sought it through intuition and creativity which showed in his writing. Eagleton being a Marxist showed through his works class struggle, materialism, and empiricism. Both Marxists and transcendentalists seek an exemplary world, free of the chains of established religions and the limitations of the class which makes them similar.…

century that promotes intuitive, spiritual thinking instead of scientific thinking based on material things. In other words, the transcendentalist movement supported living life through all natural truth. This movement was put into play by several people, but more specifically speaking with the head of this philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was an American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher and essayist during the 19th century. One of his best-known essays is "Self-Reliance.” Living…

the art of poetry and reassemble the “Dead Poets Society”; a society dedicated to the transcendentalist ideals of literary geniuses such as Walt Whitman and David Henry Thoreau. These ideals and literary pieces cause some of the boys like Neal Perry, Charlie Dalton, and Knox Overstreet to become transcendentalists and exercise non-conformity in their lives. Knox Overstreet’s journey to becoming a transcendentalist starts when he meets a girl named Chris. He begins as a student who is not…

members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. “Transcendentalist embodied a number of the new attitudes regarding man’s relationship to the universe and the quality of the life that he leads” (16). Transcendentalist were basically optimists that live in the present and had no worry of the future. They focused on reason and believed they would find truth in themselves and through their own individuality. Transcendentalist believed that to focus on the right thing they had to…

Transcendentalism was a literary and philosophical movement in the early 1900s in the U.S. It is based on the philosophy that an individual must be self-reliant and independent to be at their best. Transcendentalist believed that organized religious and political institution ruined the pureness of an individual. Furthermore, they assumed that every person has the knowledge about themselves and surroundings around them that go beyond what they sense (hear, taste, feel and see) through…