Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is in the middle of the 19th century under the influence of Kant, Schelling, and Coleridge in the United States of intellectuals to Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, Amos Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Margaret Fuller founded neuidealistische movement. Base was the humanistic religion of Unitarianism. Said by outsiders Transcendental Club discussion group met initially at Emerson in Concord (Massachusetts ), and later with Peabody in Boston.

General

Transcendentalism united - on the basis of the transcendental philosophy of German idealism - influences of the English romance, mystical ideas and Indian philosophies. With his optimistic view of the world, he turned against both dogmatic religions and against materialistic and overly rationalistic thinking. The transcendentalists advocated a liberal, self-reliant nature and facing life. Of them significant impetus for the abolition of slavery ( abolitionist ), the emergence of the women's movement and the conservation movement.

Transcendentalism was a formative influence on the development of a distinct American national literature. Their main representatives were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. Also on writers of the American Renaissance, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville transcendentalism had a significant effect.

Important works of transcendentalism

• Ralph Waldo Emerson: The American Scholar (1837 ), Nature ( 1836)
• Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854 ) - German Walden
• Henry David Thoreau: From the diaries (1837-1861) - German -language excerpts from the diaries, 1996