Earnest and fiercely optimistic. Transcendentalists, who included in their number such poetically polemical firebrands as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, pursued with a passion the most fascinating -ism in American culture.
Transcendentalists weren’t keen on conforming to doctrine, and they didn’t all sing out of the same hymnbook, but they did generally hold a few notions in common. A human being, they believed, possessed in his or her experience and nature the aptitude for truth and spiritual enlightenment. Even in the rough-hewn heart of a brand-new nation, an individual could rise above brute appetite and the cruel machinations of industry and government, attaining the spiritual altitude required to reform society and do right by one’s fellows.
For its era, this was a profoundly compelling idea, and it sent a jolt of energy into American religion, literature, politics, and thought. It also moved people to action. Transcendentalists opposed slavery, argued for women’s rights, stood up for oppressed laborers, and agitated for all kinds of reforms in religion, education, politics, and law.
Transcendentalism was a big tent, and it attracted a motley crew of kooks and crackpots along with some of the nation’s leading lights. Emerson, describing a confab of religious reformers, wrote, “If the assembly was disorderly, it was picturesque. Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day-Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and Philosophers — all came successfully to the top, and seized their moment, if not their hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, or protest.”
As an ambitious movement to unify and reform society, transcendentalism failed, and its influence waned during the latter half of the nineteenth century. After all, it’s hard to codify social conduct if an individual has the sole authority to decide what’s right and wrong. But if the ism itself is now mostly a matter for historians, its ideas and ideals still exert a powerful influence on American culture. Today’s campaigners for social justice, environmentalism, human rights, individual liberties, and liberal education fortify their arguments with values transcendentalism put on the front burner almost two centuries ago.
If there’s one quality that unites past and present in this enduring tradition, it may well be optimism, Philip Gura concludes. And sure enough, the fundamentally optimistic belief that people can rise above their plight and make the world better shines as a bright, warm sun on every chapter of this truly American story.
Neil Caudle was the editor of Endeavors for fifteen years.
American Transcendentalism: A History. By Philip F. Gura. Hill and Wang, 365 pages, $27.50.Philip Gura is the William S. Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture.