American Transcendentalism: Religious and Philosophical Contexts
1. American Transcendentalism
Religious and Philosophical Contexts
Dr. Craig Carey
ENG 489: Studies in American Literature
University of Southern Mississippi, Spring 2017
2. TRANSCENDENTALISM IN CONTEXT
Religious Context
Philosophical Context
Unitarianism & Liberal Christianity
German Higher Critics (Biblical Criticism)
Eastern & non-Western scriptures
Locke’s Empiricism
German Idealism
Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection
Swedenborg’s “Correspondences”
3. National Context
• territorial expansion
• population increase
• industrial revolution
• marketplace revolution
• technological revolution
• class inequality
• north/south divisions
• religious sectarianism
• gender inequality
• slavery and abolitionism
6. Locke’s Rationalism and Empiricism
• Knowledge derives from the senses—from the
raw data of the senses (no inner flame)
• Philosophy of sensualism: knowledge begins
with sensations and perceptions
• Nothing new in mind that is not put there by the
senses
• All thought and reflection is empirically derived
from sense perception
• Mind is incapable of direct apprehension of
supersensible truth
7.
8. John Locke, from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper [tabula
rasa], void of all characters without any ideas; how comes it to be
furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and
boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless
variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To
this I answer, in one word, From experience: in that all our knowledge
is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation,
employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal
operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves is
that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of
thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all
the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.
9. Transcendentalist Critique
of Locke’s Empiricism
• They saw Locke’s epistemology as a rank materialism
and sensationalism
• Locke’s empirical view offered an unspiritual view of
man’s higher capacities
• Locke’s empiricism leads to a religion of self-interest
• Offered an empiricist, materialistic, and passive model
of the mind
• Failed to account for creative role of the mind itself in
actively shaping experience.
• The slate individuals were handed was not blank; it
contained universal truths; idealist categories that were
ground of intuition
10. Speculative Tradition in European thought
(Idealist philosophy)
• Shift from 18th century rationalism to 19th century
romanticism (turn to subjectivity)
• Speculative and idealist currents offered way out of
Locke’s empiricism
• Offered spiritual and speculative character
• Emphasis on power to move soul and mind
• Chance to create a vital religion and philosophy
that included the emotions
• Influence of Germany and German Idealism
• Philosophers Kant, Hegel, and Fries; naturalist
and scientist Alexander von Humboldt; writers
like Goethe
11. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection
offered his famous epistemological distinction
Reason Understanding
Spontaneous Reason
Higher Reason
Divine Intuition
Kantian Intuition
Internal principle not
subject to empirical proof
Capable of direct intuitive
perception of Truth
Rational Faculty
Logical Faculty
Inductive Reasoning
Lockean Empiricism
Doctrines and beliefs
are the objects of
man’s direct and
intuitive knowledge
12. Emanuel Swedenborg
Doctrine of Universal Correspondency
• Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, and mystic
• Founder of the Church of the New Jerusalem
• Natural world was the emanation of God
• Offered a “key” to the correspondence between
worlds of matter and spirit
• Insisted that “correspondential” relationship of nature to
spirit is available through language, itself an analogue
of nature
• At creation, God impressed Nature with a set of
correlatives or symbols, which man could read and
interpret with their creative power
• Synthesized religion and science with poetry
13. Friedrich Schleiermacher
Primary of Feeling to Spirital Life
• German romantic theologian - influential to George
Ripley, Emerson, Brownson, etc. Plays out in much of
Margaret Fuller’s journals on mystical experiences
• Postulated a religious element in all mankind
• Religion consists not in knowledge or action but in
feeling, in religious emotion
• Relocating religion in the heart of each believer
• Religion was inward feeling, not something validated by
sensory experience
14. Immanuel Kant
(German Idealism)
• Kant concerned less with objects than with a priori structures
of the mind
• Kant identified an originary class of ideas—that which didn’t
come by experience (imperative forms)
• These ideas were intuitions of the mind itself
• Kant called them Transcendental forms
• Kantian categories—pure a priori concepts that appear
before sensory experience
• For Transcendentalists, the limitation of Kant was that he had
no interest in aesthetic or spiritual element in individuals
• Kant’s philosophy was filtered to transcendentalists by
British interpreters such as Coleridge
16. Unitarianism
• Transcendentalism began as a quarrel within the Unitarian church…
many transcendentalists were Unitarian clergyman.
• Unitarianism began as a movement sparked by liberal opposition to
the idea of sectarianism as such.
• In time, the most liberal members objected when it began to
consolidate into a sect itself
17. • Origins in the 18th century tension between New Light and Old
Light during Great Awakening
• New Lights were supporters of the revivals of the Great
Awakening (1730s-40s)
• These pro-revivalists were exemplified by Jonathan
Edwards
• New Lights believed in the necessity of emotional conversion
experience.
• Gave rise to intuitive, experiential, and passionate
perspective on spirituality
• Belief that God gave man gift of intuition, insight, and
inspiration
• Anticipated by Quaker doctrine of “inner light”; even
Jesus’s claim that “the kingdom of God is within you”
Historical Development of Unitarianism
18. • Old Light - argued for primacy of reason in religion
• Exemplified by Charles Chauncy, who saw
religion as matter of head, not heart
• Felt that emotional religious experience was
insult to human intelligence
• Development of “Liberal Christianity” and then, in
the early 19th century, “Unitarianism”
Historical Development of Unitarianism
19. • Early 19th century rebellion against traditional Trinitarianism
and Calvinism
Historical Development of Unitarianism
• Unitarians rejected notion of a Trinitarian deity—Father,
Son, & Holy Spirit. Argued instead for a unitary God
• Jesus Christ was simply the supreme model for
humanity
20. • Rejected harsh tenets of Calvinism; brought more
optimism and rationalism to faith
• Rejected doctrine of innate depravity—that we are born
depraved
• Turned to Locke’s Empiricism to undermine
Calvinist belief in original sin
• If mind was blank slate, it cannot be innately
depraved
• Questioned the authority of doctrine itself
• Held that essence of spirituality lies in life and
practice, not theology or creeds
• Why should creeds have greater authority than
individual conscience or inner light?
Historical Development of Unitarianism
21. • For the Transcendentalists, Unitarianism didn’t go far enough
• While it broke with Calvinist doctrines…
• it remained cold and rational; too empirical
• its view of the mind rested on John Locke’s
epistemology
• it was too fixated on proof - finding empirical proof for
miracles of Jesus
• it was still stuck in cold rational mode; what Emerson
called “corpse-cold”
• Transcendentalists replaced Unitarian concept of
anthropomorphic God with a non-anthropomorphic force or
spirit - one present in all things (could be accessed by
studying God, nature, people, etc.)
Historical Development of Unitarianism
22. • Transcendentalism was formed in context of wide interest in
language and its meaning, including in Scripture
• Higher Criticism: German scholars reading Jewish and
Chrisitan scripture through eyes of historical and literary
analysis
• What was scripture? Direct, unmediated word of God?
Or the words of men who interpreted Divine Word in their
own language and culture
• Word of God as the product of historical, cultural, and
linguistic contexts
• Used rational, modern critical tools to discover the
deeper truths of Christianity
• Urged study of the Bible as a literary artifact instead of
divinely inspired text
Bibilical Criticism (German Higher Critics)
23. American Transcendentalism
Religious and Philosophical Contexts
Dr. Craig Carey
ENG 489: Studies in American Literature
University of Southern Mississippi, Spring 2017
