Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism was a philosophy that was very popular in New England during the 1830’s. Transcendentalism was very much like Romanticism. Transcendentalism upheld the goodness of humanity, the glories of nature, and the importance of free individual express. Transcendentalism maintained that an awareness of reality, or a sense of truth, is reached through intuition rather than through reasoning or logic.

Transcendentalism had the belief that individuals act according to their innermost personal beliefs or spiritual convictions, rather then follow the dictates of society. This is shown in Self Reliance by Emerson in “A Nonconformist”. In here a man is conforming and giving money to the blacks of Barbados to feel good when he does not act kinder to his fellow Americans he has as s...