Transcendentalists: Borrowing From Non-Western Cultures

Transcendentalists: Borrowing from Non-Western Cultures

The concept of transcendentalism is often used in the religious and philosophical debates, particularly to describe the characteristic of divinity, the feature of God to transcend being and the immanent world. Philosophically speaking, it is also used to refer to the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant and his followers and in a general definition it refers to the fact that there are modes of being and principles of existence beyond the reach of mundane experience. Nonetheless, in this paper I will analyze the transcendentalist school, also known as American Transcendentalism, movement started in the nineteenth century in New England, with the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Nature."

Following some already existing trends and inspired from Emerson's words, a coherent movement started to be shaped in 1836, with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with famous intellectuals of the time as members - Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Putnam, and Frederick Henry Hedge. Although a complete and exact definition of the main ideas and principles of the Transcendentalist group is hard to be sketched here, I have to say that the main features of the movement were the idealist and somehow utopian perspective over the connection between ideas and concrete action, and a questioning of the established cultural forms of the era. In Emerson's words, there is no such thing as a Transcendental party; that there is no pure Transcendentalist; that we know of no one but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.... Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish" (Emerson, 1842)

According to the speech just quoted, Transcendentalist movement is inspired by the Kantian response to Locke's sensualism and the fundamental idea that the mind can apprehend absolute spiritual truths directly without having to go through the detour of the senses, without the dictates of past authorities and institutions, and without the plodding labor of ratiocination. This philosophical and epistemological perspective reaches beyond Kant's words, since the latter was constantly stressing the limitations of the mind when it comes to absolute or spiritual knowledge.

The social philosophy of the Transcendentalist movement was rather utopian, and the communities of Brook Farm, established by some members of the movement, were trying to give an institutional form to the ideas and principles of the group. Their definition of education and how it should be - namely to stimulate the child according to his/her own abilities - are still visible in the contemporary educational system, thanks to the influential work of some of its members, such as Elisabeth Palmer Peabody.

Moreover, Transcendentalism as a social movement is also associated with the protest against the Unitarian Church. Historians have commonly treated the relationship between the Transcendentalists and their Unitary opponents as a dispute between youthful champions of essential religious values and the tradition bound elders (Hutchinson, 1956). The spiritual debates were mainly caused by the idealistic approach to moral and social life that the Transcendentalists were promoting and to the virtues and abilities of the individual mind - such as the individual "oneness" and the power of intuitive knowledge and faith, that were contradicting the Unitarian perspective.

The roots of this approach can be barely found in the Western religiosity and culture and are, rather, coming from the Indian Vedic sources. Both Emerson and Thoreau, top representatives of the movement, were deeply interested in the Indian and particularly Hindu philosophy. This fact can be seen particularly after the journal "Dial" started to be published.

The similarities between the two perspectives - the Vedic and the Transcendentalist ones - start with the stress over the virtues of intuition when it comes to both social and spiritual knowledge. Truth must agree to an individual intuitive notion of truth, seem to say the Transcendentalists, and part of this truth can be found within nature. Maintaining a Christian approach (which means that the doubts they were expressing were connected rather to the teachings of the church than to the words of the Gospel), they held that religious knowledge is also a matter of intuitive abilities, rather than of rituals and practices. Later on, they started to question some aspects of the Bible, meaning the miracles described there, as being uncertainly of divine nature, but possible signs of pious mythology.

The concept of original sin was contradicted by the transcendentalist authors, who believed in the innate goodness of man and in the priority of individual spiritual insights and instincts, which is a clear deviation from the rules and dogma of the Church. In the social context of the Unitarian and Calvin communities from the 19th century America, this was a real challenge, and the opposition they had to face was increasingly growing.

The religious and philosophical aspects created debates even among the members of the movement. Some of them were more radical than others when it came to social reform (for example, Emerson refused to participate in the Brook Farms community, since he was having a more individualistic approach), some were more devoted to Christian traditions then others, who were more fascinated by the sacred texts of the Orient.

One of the strongest supporters of the Eastern ways of perception was Henri David Thoreau, who in promoting the Buddha to the same rank as Christ, in elevating the scriptures of the East alongside those of West, [...] was plainly striking a raw nerve. It was not the case, of course, that liberally educated readers of 1849 were unprepared for objections, in the abstract, to the ascendancy of Christian faith; what they found hard to take, though, was this brazen assault on Christian supremacy by way of a series of irrelevant comparisons with various preposterous Hindu, Buddhist or Chinese religious forms" (Hodder, 1993; 404)

For Emerson, on the other hand, the unity between the soul and the nature is announced even since the publication of his work "Nature." Here, he expressed that all the beings in the Nature are interconnected with each other and with the infinite Oversoul, or Nature. The reverberations of individual acts are felt within the entire system as consequences and the individual has not only the ability to decide autonomously about his acts, but also the duty to deal with the consequences of his own actions, when confronted to his own internal intuition, with his soul. These arguments are of Eastern origins and close to the Buddhist doctrine of individual responsibility, of the causal relation between one's actions and his own spiritual development.