As a long time student of American Transcendentalism, I disagree with the one line summary of the book's message that the Transcendentalists had a 'profound' influence on American intellectual and cultural life.
I would say that on the contrary they did indeed have a powerful influence but that it was superficial (not profound) and distorted.
The core/ profound reality of New England Transcendentalism (i.e. the idea of an objective intuition as the basis of metaphysical and empirical knowledge and behaviour) was more-and-more completely excluded from the mainstream of US ideology after the Civil War.
It was left behind when the US adopted materialism/ scientism/ positivism as the sole basis for public discourse (with a waning Christian literalism as the only countervailing idea).
Modern advocates of Transcendentalism - esepcially in the academic/ literary/ cultural Establishment - are mostly standard-extreme leftists, whose ideas track mainstream party-political leftism; and who aspire only to be an avant-garde for such God-excluding, spirit-excluding, transcenedent-excluding materialism.
Those of us who still read them still find them to be a salutary influence. I have loved Emerson since I first read him in high school. I have made a pilgrimage to his house. I continue to be inspired by thoughts such as this: “The soul that ascendeth to worship the great God, is plain and true; … does not want admiration; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest experience of the common day.” It is true, though, that American society — and the American academy in particular — has long since followed a different and more vulgar path. I have book called Through the Year With Emerson. It was published in 1905. The copy I have — which I got in a used book store is some small town somewhere, is inscribed "To Mrs. Fred Miller In remembrance of the The Ladies First Reformed Church Toledo Ohio. June 18th 1907." Throughout, certain selections have a name inscribed next to them as indicating their pertinence for those particular persons. So Emerson was still alive for some Americans even then. But that was a long way off.
As a long time student of American Transcendentalism, I disagree with the one line summary of the book's message that the Transcendentalists had a 'profound' influence on American intellectual and cultural life.
ReplyDeleteI would say that on the contrary they did indeed have a powerful influence but that it was superficial (not profound) and distorted.
The core/ profound reality of New England Transcendentalism (i.e. the idea of an objective intuition as the basis of metaphysical and empirical knowledge and behaviour) was more-and-more completely excluded from the mainstream of US ideology after the Civil War.
It was left behind when the US adopted materialism/ scientism/ positivism as the sole basis for public discourse (with a waning Christian literalism as the only countervailing idea).
Modern advocates of Transcendentalism - esepcially in the academic/ literary/ cultural Establishment - are mostly standard-extreme leftists, whose ideas track mainstream party-political leftism; and who aspire only to be an avant-garde for such God-excluding, spirit-excluding, transcenedent-excluding materialism.
Those of us who still read them still find them to be a salutary influence. I have loved Emerson since I first read him in high school. I have made a pilgrimage to his house. I continue to be inspired by thoughts such as this: “The soul that ascendeth to worship the great God, is plain and true; … does not want admiration; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest experience of the common day.”
ReplyDeleteIt is true, though, that American society — and the American academy in particular — has long since followed a different and more vulgar path.
I have book called Through the Year With Emerson. It was published in 1905. The copy I have — which I got in a used book store is some small town somewhere, is inscribed "To Mrs. Fred Miller In remembrance of the The Ladies First Reformed Church Toledo Ohio. June 18th 1907." Throughout, certain selections have a name inscribed next to them as indicating their pertinence for those particular persons. So Emerson was still alive for some Americans even then. But that was a long way off.