transcendentalism and overoul and emerson and andrews norton and kant

Transcendentalism is one of those slippery words that needs some attention before we can put to bed these four essays on Massachusetts religious freedom and Unitarianism. Its original American usage comes from 1842 but it points backwards to a movement which tended to crystallize in its annus mirabilis of 1836. That year saw the publication of Emerson's Nature, George Ripley's Discourses on the Philosophy of Religion, and Orestes Brownson's New Views of Chrsitianity, Society, and Church. When combined with Emerson's vague yet controversial Divinity School Address to the small (about a dozen) graduating class of Harvard Divinity School in 1838, these works acted as a sort of "95 Theses" against traditional religion. The Divinity School Address, however, only assumed tremendous controversial proportions because one of the hearers, Unitarian biblical studies professor Andrews Norton, attacked Emerson viciously in print within a month after it was delivered. But, the mention of Norton links us up with Unitarianism again, and so let's begin.

The Word

The words "transcendental" and "transcendentalism" derive from Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) philosophy. Though any brief summary of his thought is unjust, Kant posited a level of human awareness that went beyond (or around) the senses and the capacity of reason, a level of awareness which could understand the transcendental or "beyond" world. This "beyond" word was a world of abstract Ideas, and so the word "idealism" also became associated with "transcendentalism." The practical implication of this philosophy was the stress on the human capacity intuitively to feel and understand dimensions of reality that exceeded those communicated to us through our senses. When Emerson first used the word "transcendentalism" in 1842, this connection is clear: "What is popularly called Transcendentalism among is, is Idealism." Many scholars have emphasized, however, that there was little real direct connection between Kant's ideas and the New England transcendentalists; at most they will say that Kant's ideas were mediated to New England through Coleridge and Carlyle. In any case, something was brewing among the Unitarians (since all the first Transcendentalists were Unitarians) that made them particularly susceptible to new philosophical winds. What was it?

Unitarian Vulnerabilities

The Unitarians discovered to their chagrin that their victory over the Congregationalists (at least through the Dedham decision and the formation of more than 120 Unitarian congregations) did not mean that they were on solid footing as a new religious movement. In fact, as is often the case, their uniqueness derived from what they were not (i.e., traditional Trinitarian Congregationalists) than what they were. So, after the break with the Congregationalists was in full swing in the 1820s, the Unitarians found themselves at a loss to define the nature of a Unitarian credo. They maintained a sort of ethical and social conservatism that was constricting to the younger members of the clergy, especially those who came of age after the Dedham decision. In addition, they doggedly held to a Lockean epistemololgy and believed still in that old argument that the reality of the miracles was one of the signal proofs of the truth of the Gospel. Indeed, after the Divinity School Address, Norton set about in a harumphing manner to write several refutations of the address in which he stressed the importance of the miracles of Jesus as confirming the truth of the Gospel. Thus, Unitarianism quickly was perceived as a stodgy, emotionless, wealthy, self-satisfied movement of the religiously tepid and comfortable. As one person defined the movement-- It believed in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man in the Neighborhood of Boston.

Reaction/Beliefs of the Transcendentalists

Thus, the pressures on the younger ministers, such as Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson were from without and within. From without were all kinds of interesting philosophical and poetic currents streaming in from Germany via England; from within were dissatisfactions with the stogdy and punchless Unitarianism in which they were nurtured. Nature and life were alive, not dead. Youth and hope and new ideas were filling the air, and all the younger men could see were elders who were self-satisfied in their wealth and approach to religion. In fact, God was everywhere, in the whispering leaves, in the pounding surf, in the inner recesses of the human soul. The human soul was part of the Oversoul or universal spirit to which it and other souls would return at death. In fact, the human was not to be distinguished really from God; humans carried with them not simply a spark of divinity but were divine themselves. Miracles were not objective phenomena that scholars argued over but little glittering realities that happened every day. As Whitman would later say: "A mouse is a miracle enough to stagger quintillions of infidels." The opening paragraph of Emerson's Divinity School Address, delivered when he was 35, captures the mood and tone of Transcendentalism:

"In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation."

This language tries a little too hard, from the perspective of 2005, to create the reality to which it points, but you get the point. We are all now caught up in the splendiferous beauty of nature.*

[*A helpful website on Transcendentalism is here. Classic Transcendentalist texts are here.]

Conclusion

Most Transcendentalists didn't stop with an admiration of nature or their googoing over the connection of the human soul to the Oversoul. Many went on to be social reformers and had leading roles in the anti-slavery movement. But once they had tasted the sweetness of realms beyond the rational, they could no longer get hooked back into traditional religion, even Unitarianism. And, indeed, their spirituality, though surviving the Civil War, ended up foundering on the hard shoals of the Gilded Age and the 20th century. Yet, they remain figures of immense interest and allure. Every time an American speaks about flights of the soul, s/he shows at least some indebtedness to the Transcendentalists.

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