"The Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson -an essay expressing Transcendentalist ideas

Transcendental Idealism

The term transcendental idealism emerged by the 18^th century by the Germen philosopher Immanuel Kant. In 1781, Immanuel Kant influenced society through his philosophy, and what is known as Kantian or transcendental idealism; Kantian idealism provides that people mind had a system that allows them to behave correctly. In addition to innate principles, the intuition of mind helps human to act, according to him the mind is the engine of the ideal thinking, he defined the concept of transcendental idealism in his book The critique of pure reason in two places: the first concept, is in the first edition version of the fourth paralogism where he distinguished between “transcendental idealism” (affirming the reality of a spiritual or ideal realm above that of material reality), and “empirical idealism” (affirming the precedence of sense perception over idealistic of spiritual speculation), which is related to Descartes, (Allison 111). Kant stated that:
The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming Something more than the certainty of representations in me. (Kant 426).
The second place is in The Antinomy of Pure Reason where he defined transcendental idealism as:
…all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations, which as they are represented, as extended beings or series of alterations, have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. (Kant 511).
The first passage defines the transcendental ideality of space and time, however, the second focuses on the objects offered in them, which means appearances, and the ideality of the last one is required by the previous one. Kant also defined his idealism as “formal” or “critical”, formal idealism which is a theory of priori forms under objects which can be known by human mind. However, critical idealism has a relationship with discursive cognition and known as a reversal of the conditions and limits. To understand more the concept of transcendental idealism we should focus on Kant’s account of how people perceive objects. The concept of idealism in American transcendentalism has a special relation to freedom, Consciousness and rationality are the most important spices in idealism, human beings are totally good at their core, and the main reason of corruption is society. (Allison 111).
The Reasons for the Rise of the Movement
Transcendentalism flourished at the height of literary and aesthetic romanticism in Europe and America, and inspired by romantic English and European writers, it was a form of American romanticism. According to many scientists there was no one precise cause for the beginning of transcendentalism, however Paul Boller stated that chance, coincidence and several events, thoughts and tendencies seemed to have converged in the 1830s in new England. Some of these were: The steady erosion of Calvinism, the progressive secularization of modern though under the impact of science and technology, and the emergence of intelligentsia¹.
Transcendentalism arose due to several reasons:
First of all, it was a human philosophy; it established the individual right in the universe and adopted respect for human abilities. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the movement was in part a reaction against the increasing industrialization and against the human materialism that often accompanied it. The Progressive mill owner Francis Cabot Knoll introduced energy in the American textile industry at the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814. When the nature of the work and the role of the work were undergoing tremendous change before their eyes and all close to the home, New England grew transcendental to maturity in the same Time.
Secondly, in the early nineteenth century, in the period before the rise of transcendentalism, satisfaction with the spiritual decrease of established religion was on the rise. Some early Unitarian ministers especially William Ellery Channing had turned away from harsh, unforgiving congregational Calvinism and moralized a more humanistic, emotionally expressive, and socially conscious from a religion. Many early Unitarians among them Channing had a shaped influence on the transcendentalists.
In addition, the tolerant are then regarded as a reaction to the extreme rationalism of the Enlightenment because many Liberal liberals remained under the influence of the 17^th century including the English philosopher John Locke who explained the knowledge as cognizable and later introduced the knowledge as intuitive in direct opposition to Locke.
The dissatisfaction with the firm religion that influenced the transgressors was expressed strongly and clearly in the “Theological Seminary” in Emerson in 1838, in which Emerson asked:
In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man-made sensible that hi is an infinite soul; that he is drinking forever the soul of God? Where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? (Emerson 18-19).
The third reason for the rising tide is the growing interest in the availability of foreign literature and philosophy after 1800. The Americans traveled and studied in Europe, some bringing books to America when they returned home. Joseph Stevens traveled to Buckminster to Europe in 1801, studied Bible scholarship and European methods of Bible interpretation, and returned home with about three thousand volumes purchased abroad. In 1815, George Ticknor and Edward Everett went to Europe to study; they traveled extensively, studied at the University of Gottingen in Germany, and returned to America to hold important academic positions at Harvard University. Emerson was specifically one of their students¹.
During this period, too, began translating into English from European business to make foreign thought and writing more available. The Rev. Moses Stuart, a professor at the Andover Theological Institute, translated the Greek and Hebrew grammar from German in the early 19^th century, and translated many into English such as Madame de Steele's de l'Immagine. At the same time, Coleridge and Carlyle’s writings were too famous; this is what led many in England and America to open the door to German thought and literature.
Finally, the most famous reason for the rise of the movement is the famous philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was considered as the father of transcendentalists and the center of the American transcendental movement.