Transcendentalism Overview

What is Transcendentalism?

Transcendentalism can be defined in different ways,I look at it as looking beyond major consent and asking why. Going along our own thought processes and going against scientific evidence. Transcendentalism beliefs are destroyed by the corruption of society, in the mass amounts of corruption you loss the ideals of  Transcendentalism.  A great way to be in this state of mind is to go in to solitude, in solitude you can find the four main ideals to transcendentalism.

Beauty=solitude=Transcendentalism

Individualism        Optimism        Self-reliance       Intuition

To build upon my definition and highlight the main idea I have chosen a quote from a important American Transcendentalism, Thoreau. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived" (Thoreau). In his escape to nature Thoreau discovered things about who he is and the beauty of nature. The escape to nature will find your solitude and understand Individualism, Optimism, Self-reliance and Intuition. " If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find the complete list" (Thoreau) Society pressures and encouraged to mold to conformity. Thus losing the main points of Transcendentalism. "I call all knowledge transcendental which is concerned, not with objects, but with our mode of knowing objects so far as this is possible a priori." (Kant) He expresses his beliefs about how how he thinks that the things that we know are based on what we are born knowing. These three genius used the basic building blocks of life to brake out of this social barrier and create a revolution in man kind.