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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 141.30973
EAN: 9780809016440
ISBN: 0809016443
Label: Hill and Wang
Manufacturer: Hill and Wang
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: September 02, 2008
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Release Date: September 02, 2008
Sales Rank: 60698
Studio: Hill and Wang
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Product Description:
American Transcendentalism is a sweeping narrative history of America’s first group of public intellectuals, the men and women who defined American literature and indelibly marked American reform in the decades before and following the American Civil War. Philip F. Gura masterfully traces their intellectual genealogy to transatlantic religious and philosophical ideas, illustrating how these informed the fierce theological debates that, so often first in Massachusetts and eventually throughout America, gave rise to practical, personal, and quixotic attempts to improve, even perfect the world. The transcendentalists would painfully bifurcate over what could be attained and how, one half epitomized by Ralph Waldo Emerson and stressing self-reliant individualism, the other by Orestes Brownson, George Ripley, and Theodore Parker, emphasizing commitment to the larger social good. By the 1850s, transcendentalists turned ever more exclusively to abolition, and by war’s end transcendentalism had become identified exclusively with Emersonian self-reliance, congruent with the national ethos of political liberalism and market capitalism.
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Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Uniquely American
This book is a history of the American Transcendental Movement that focuses on those individuals who either participated in the movement or were otherwise associated with it. Professor Gura is rather less interested in the ideas and social context of the movement. This is strangely appropriate since the one constant among American transcendentalists was their belief in individualism. Unfortunately the reader is then left with the task of sorting out just what transcendentalism was and the social context in which it developed.
The American Transcendentalist Movement was quite small. It was limited almost entirely to a handful of liberal Unitarian clergyman. But the movement also included a couple of remarkable women, Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody. Geographically it was principally confined to Massachusetts and to a lesser extent New England. Its most active period was from the early 1830's through 1850. Finally it was a religious not a philosophical movement. Its core premise was perhaps best expressed by George Ripley (1802-1880) when he argued that: man was..."conscious of an inward nature, which is the source of more important and comprehensive ideas than any which the external senses suggest." As applied to religion this concept give individual conscious precedence over everything else in matters of religion. This individualism gave the transcendentalist movement its unique character, but also prevented it from becoming a cohesive philosophy. Ralph Waldo Emerson its most ... Read More
Rating:  - A mixed bag!
I found the sections dealing with the sociologiccal impacts of Transcendentalism quite interesting. However, those parts treating the theological implications bogged down in religious hairsplitting which would probably be of interest only to a theologian. Book does contain good descriptions of the main players in the movement.
Rating:  - American Transcendentalism
In "American Transcendentalism: A History" Philip Gura, has written a learned and detailed account that is both inspiring and critical of an important movement in American thought. Gura is the William Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Many readers have only a vague notion of what the Transcendentalist movement was about together with a notion that Emerson and Thoreau were at its center. Gura shows that the movement was, indeed, quite loose, with many people finding many different meanings and goals in Transcendentalism. He also shows that Emerson was, at least initially, not at the center of the movement and that he differed from many of his fellow Transcendentalists in key ways. The movement flourished from the 1830s to the 1850s, was basically subsumed by the Civil War, and then reappeared in several modified forms in post-War American. Ultimately, it was largely replaced (or modified) as the paradigmatic American philosophy by William James and his fellow pragmatists.
Transcendentalism was a form of philosophical idealism which stressed the immediacy of individual consciousness as a means of understanding what was valuable in experience. In addition to its subjectivism, transcendentalism had a strong universalist component as it found that every person would share essentially the same intuitions of value and meaning if they looked inside themselves. Transcendentalists opposed the empiricism ... Read More
Rating: - The philosophies that inspired Emerson, Thoreau, & all the rest
It's the question that you dread to be asked, if you're a follower of Emerson or Thoreau: "What the heck IS transcendentalism, anyway? Where did it come from?" You stutter and you stammer and you explain what the concept means to you, which is probably not what someone else would say. And you hope that if the inquirer was merely being polite, you won't have to launch into any further details about the influence of German, French, and English writers and philosophers on New England Unitarians in the 1830s. If you're lucky, you'll be able to steer the conversation toward a safer topic. Like the contemporary political scene. Or the war in Iraq.
Phil Gura has made our lives much easier by publishing this history of the American transcendentalist movement. Now all the loose ends are tied up in this one, valuable volume. He traces those European ideas back to their sources, then shows how they surfaced in America. Those were the days when folks read pieces of literature and philosophy in their original languages, and aspiring scholars took the time to translate those works into English. Those were the days when religious debate was a common occurrence, and men of the cloth published opinionated pamphlets that others vocally supported or viciously denigrated in the popular press or in their own esoteric periodicals. American religions were still in a period of evolution and transition, and the Transcendentalists emerged as a result. You'll have to read this book to find out how that happened. ... Read More
Rating: - American Trancendentalism by Gura
This is an excellent work on the Transcendentalist
movement in America. Famous names; such as,
Emerson and Thoreau are contained in the work.
The tireless efforts of Brownson are extolled with
regard to improvements in the plight of laborers.
Margaret Fuller's efforts on behalf of women are set
forth in detail. The reformer, Alcott brought about
new education methods/methodologies.
The presentation is in the
tradition of deep religious and philosophical
thinking in Europe and America. The 1850s brought about
a considerable opposition to slavery and this aspect
is highlighted in the book. The transcendentalist,
Ellis spoke about the origination of ideas via
Divine Revelation. The scientist, Dr. Benjamin Fain
developed this connection in his work-
Creation Ex Nihilo.
The Transcendentalists worked from Biblical associations
to create unique utopian reforms. Emerson believed in the
notion of a primitive universal language to facilitate
commuication.
Charles Fourier envisioned a grand Ediface of Association
consisting of a medieval-like elongated building with
multiple stalls lining the front. This style of architecture
epitomized a unique housing arrangement integrally related
to the form of social organization within.
There is a unique discussion on spontaneous reason in
the "essential nature of things" . This comports ... Read More
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