12 – American Transcendentalism and Pragmatism

Revised 2023 Summer

Sometimes these sources are called “Classical American” but your instructor has reserved that classification for the philosophies of Indigenous Americans.

AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM

Emerson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

Nature
https://emersoncentral.com/texts/nature-addresses-lectures/nature2/

“Self-Reliance”
https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/self-reliance/
“Let a Stoic open the resources of man”

“The Over-Soul”
https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/the-over-soul/

Thoreau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

Walden & On The Duty of Civil Disobedience
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm

A Fluid-Text Edition of Walden
http://digitalthoreau.org/fluid-text-toc/

Elizabeth Peabody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Peabody
Still looking for primary source texts available online. Peabody worked with Emerson and Thoreau on “The Dial,” translated the “Lotus Sutra” from French (work usually attributed to Thoreau) and wrote about Kindergarten philosophy or the educational value of play. Here is a link to her bio at a Transcendentalism website:
http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/peabody/

21st Century Response

“Furthermore, I found it interesting that Emerson acknowledges the existence of spirit in the universe, which reflects the invisible world. For Emerson, this universal spirit has the need to express itself in material form int things in nature. Thus, things of nature actually already existed in the form of spirit in the mind of God. Nature becomes the thing in itself, or the substance, and the mediator, which mediates between man and God as God, or the Over-Soul, speaks to man through nature. Likewise, Native philosophy holds to the view of the vital presence of spirit. In this philosophy, all things in nature have spirits which have to be respected by human beings. In fact, Native people are able to see that behind each phenomenon of nature, there the spirit of the Creator resides. In addition, Native philosophy goes even further and attributes not only spirit to physical things, but also power because power is one of the attributes of the universal spirit. This power in things of nature requires even deeper reverence for human beings.” (Kristianto 221)

Kristianto, Bayu. “Man And The World In Emerson, Heidegger, And Native American Philosophy.” (2006): Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations. 24 Aug. 2016.

12 – American Transcendentalism and Pragmatism

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