TRANSCENDENTALISM

A form of epistemological idealism that, besides rejecting the empirical aspect of human cognition, claims to find a foundation for absolute truths immanent in the human mind or soul. This foundation is variously named "reason," "the Ego," "Absolute Spirit," etc., and is often identified in some way with god. The transcendentalism of New England, while adopting some of the notions of the European idealists, made little use of the logical rigor that characterized the latter movement.

German Transcendentalism. In modern philosophy the term transcendentalism is traced to the attempt made by kant to save universal and necessary truths after his philosophical criticism had concluded that man's cognitive powers were incapable of attaining nonempirical objects. While Kant did not deny the reality of such objects, he said they transcended human cognition and were accessible to autonomous practical reason only by an act of faith [see categorical imperative; transcendental (kantian)]. Subsequent transcendentalists constructed elaborate systems in which all reality was deduced from a single principle attained by an intuition either of the knowing subject or of the act of cognition itself.

J. G. fichte replaced Kant's autonomous practical reason by the self, or ego, taken as an absolute principle of both metaphysical truth and all reality. By systematic deduction he sought to demonstrate the procession of the nonself, that is, nature, from the practical ego as a necessary condition for moral striving. Thus, like Kant, he founded metaphysical reality upon the exigencies of morality. Reacting against this moralism, schelling identified both consciousness and nature with the absolute or God, while hegel attempted to describe in terms of dialectical triads—thesis-antithesis-synthesis—the necessary procession of nature and finite consciousness from the Absolute. Hegel sought to justify his theory by finding in the history of finite consciousness (man) and nature conclusive evidence of the dialectical life of the Absolute spirit. Here modern philosophy reached the ultimate in pantheistic monism (see pantheism). Subsequent thinkers rebelled against such a closed system, which united rationalism with idealism, and so rejected all metaphysics as absurd speculation.

American Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism in New England flourished in the 1830s after several Unitarian clergymen discovered the writings of coleridge. Coleridge's thought, while largely Romantic, had been influenced by Kant. The common notion of the transcendental philosophers, that God was somehow immanent in nature and in the human soul, was very welcome to men in revolt against the Calvinist concepts of a wrathful God and the total depravity of human nature (see unitarians; calvinism.)

Prominent in the original group of "like-minded men"—first labeled transcendentalists by opponents— were William Ellery channing, Ralph Waldo emerson, Theodore parker, Henry David thoreau and Orestes A. brownson. Differences in background, interests and temperament made disagreement and disunity among them inevitable. They agreed in asserting the immanence of divinity in man and in nature—leaving the terms vague—but each added whatever intellectual tradition he found congenial, while using their common assertion to promote his personally chosen mission in life.

Channing labored to prevent Unitarian theology from hardening into a rigid orthodoxy like the Calvinism against which it had rebelled. Advocating his "principle of essential sameness" of God and man, he appeared pantheistic in his efforts to uphold the spiritual dignity of human nature. Emerson was so inspired by the same vision of man's inalienable worth that he opposed any system that seemed to deny the natural adequacy of man to live as befitted a spiritual being; thus he broke with institutionalized Christianity as an antihuman supernaturalism. His seeming apotheosis of nature, both human and nonhuman, was offset by his Yankee practicality. His widespread popularity in America rested on the shrewd wisdom of his epigrams on self-culture rather than upon his metaphysical speculations, which were incomprehensible to most of his followers.

Parker espoused social reform, especially abolitionism, while Thoreau divorced himself from human society to become the spokesman for the world of nature.

Brownson's range of interests included religions and social reform as well as history and philosophical speculation. In seeking to justify "the divinity of man" both metaphysically and historically, he saw that the low state of humanity that had called forth the reforms of transcendentalism contradicted its basic assertion that the most sublime dignity of man was purely natural. He went on, not to deny the fact of man's godlike state, but to accept the traditional Christian doctrine that, through the incarnation, God had gratuitously elevated man to a sharing in the Divine Life. Historical research, soul searching and prayer led him to the step for which his transcendentalist friends never forgave him: he entered the Catholic Church.

New England transcendentalism illustrates well the interests and ideals of 19th-century America. For a consideration of the influence of New England transcendentalism on literature, culture and intellectual history in the United States, see transcendentalism, literary.

Bibliography: German Transcendentalism. j. d. collins, History of Modern European Philosophy (Milwaukee 1954). f. c. copleston, History of Philosophy (Westminster, Md 1946–) v.3, 4. American Transcendentalism. p. miller, The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (Cambridge, Mass. 1960). o. a. brownson, Works, ed. h. f. brownson, 20 v. (Detroit 1882–1907).

[j. e. daly]