Transcendentalism in America
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a reactionary movement from the materialism of the philosophy and theology of the eighteenth century. The movement and the term transcendental owe their origin to the German philosopher, Kant. His followers Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, who are grouped frequently under the name of idealistic philosophers, had great influence in England through Carlyle and Coleridge. This movement extended to New England , and in 1837, at Harvard, the "Symposium," or "Transcendental Club," under the leadership of Emerson, was organized. The views of the transcendentalists are too abstruse to be set forth briefly. We may say that they believed the study of the processes of thought to be the highest form of activity, and to lead ultimately to the principles governing the real world. They believed, with Schelling, that the highest truths come through intuition and not by logical reasoning or physical science. Transcendentalism had its influence upon thought, upon religion, laws, institutions, and literature. As regards social life, its aim--at least the aim of many of its adherents--was reformatory. The " Brook Farm " experiment, with the visionary Bronson Alcott at its head, was a result of this movement. Emerson said of it, "And if they eat clouds and drink wind, they have not been without service to the race of man." Besides Emerson, George Ripley, Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, William H. Channing, Henry Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott are among those identified with the transcendental movement. A necessarily transient movement, the influence of transcendentalism upon literature has been its most enduring result. Through its chief representative, Emerson, it has stood for optimism, for ideality, for spirituality, for the general uplift of humanity as well as for independence. See Kant ; Emerson ; Alcott ; Brook Farm
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The bare history in Aiton's 1910 account still holds / the Transcendental Club of 1836-37, Emerson at its centre, the roots in Kant and the German idealists by way of Coleridge and Carlyle / but one detail is simply wrong: Brook Farm was founded in 1841 by George Ripley, whom the entry lists separately; Alcott's own community was Fruitlands, begun in 1843 and collapsed within months. The bigger change is in the ranking of names. Aiton treats the movement as "necessarily transient" and Thoreau as one item in a list after Emerson; today Thoreau is the most read of them all, with "Civil Disobedience" taken up by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and Walden treated as a founding text of environmental writing. Margaret Fuller, a minor name here, is now studied as the author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) and one of the first American feminist thinkers.
Written for this edition, 2026.