Emersonian Transcendance

Generally speaking, I like the Transcendentalists. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), and the Alcotts all called the New England town of Concord, Massachusetts home at one point. Raised by Transcendentalist parents, Louisa May Alcott (1832-88) grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, and began writing from an early age. Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. But Concord from the 1820s through the 1840s was going through a transformation, and was no longer a pastoral place fit for poets and philosophers. With a population of around 2000 in the antebellum era, Concord’s small, ordered society founded by Puritans and defended by Minutemen was dramatically unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy, and becoming tightly integrated into the wider world. These changes challenged inherited institutions and involuntary associations.

As Mark Greif wrote in 2021, after its fame for having been the scene of the shot heard ‘round the world, Concord became famous a second time, in the 1840s, for its writers. “Concord” became a byword for the Transcendentalist movement, a communal web of people who supported the emergence of a philosophy steeped in romantic nature worship and dedicated to the lone soul—to the inner growth of the individual, untethered from social convention and tradition.

Emerson was a seventh-generation descendant of Mayflower voyagers, grew up as the scion of six generations of New England ministers, in Boston…In October 1834, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, to live with his step-grandfather. He was already the ninth-richest taxpayer before starting his career in Concord or acquiring fame, thanks to an enormous inheritance from his first wife’s estate. He was a minister, though one spared daily pastoral responsibilities. His own home front tended by his second wife and assorted hired help, Emerson was free to travel around giving guest sermons—ideally positioned to then do the same on a paid-lecture platform as a popular sage and orator.

On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of his first essay, “Nature,” Emerson met with Frederic Henry Hedge, George Putnam, and George Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals. This was the beginning of the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836.

Emerson's "Concord Hymn" (written for the 1837 dedication of an obelisk monument), which originated the phrase “shot heard round the world,” was written about the skirmish at the Old North Bridge in Concord, one of the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 which sparked the American Revolutionary War. Emerson lived in a house known as the Old Manse at the time when he was composing the poem, from which his grandfather and father (then a young child) had witnessed the skirmish. The house is located 91m from the Old North Bridge.

"Self-Reliance" is his famous 1841 essay. It contains the most thorough statement of one of his recurrent themes: the need for each person to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of his most famous quotations: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Emerson emphasizes the importance of individualism and its effect on a person's satisfaction in life; wrote that life is "learning and forgetting and learning again," studied the nature of the "aboriginal self on which a universal reliance may be grounded."

Although never directly stated, Emerson's "Self-Reliance" has religious influences tied into the values and beliefs presented. Critics argue that Emerson believes the Universe is not complete without "The Spirit." Without some form of spirituality or religious tendencies, society and the universe "is sad, hopeless, and largely meaningless." In his work, the Transcendentalist argues that no person, specifically individuals who are self-reliant, exists without a slight connection to a higher power.

Transcendentalists generally viewed the Bible as allegorical rather than literal. They rejected the idea of scripture as divine, literal truth, emphasizing personal intuition and spiritual experience over organized religion’s authority. Emerson, in his Divinity School Address (1838), criticized traditional Christianity’s reliance on biblical literalism, arguing that divine truth is found within individuals and nature, not in fixed texts. Thoreau similarly saw religious texts as symbolic, valuing their moral insights but not their historical or literal accuracy. For Transcendentalists, the Bible was a source of inspiration, interpreted metaphorically to align with universal spiritual truths.

It’s not exactly Deism. While both reject organized religion and literal interpretations of myths—allegorical stories—Transcendentalism sees divinity as immanent, accessible through intuition and nature. Deism views God as a distant creator who set the universe’s natural laws and does not intervene, but emphasizes reason over supernatural revelation, relying on observable natural laws for truth. While Deists prioritize rational morality and engage in building civic systems, Transcendentalists focus on mystical self-discovery. Left-brain vs. Right-brain? why not use both, I say.

A current of mild awakening had already coursed through a liberal and generous Congregationalism, which had largely done away with the Puritan belief in inherent sinfulness and predestination. Ministers in Emerson’s circles espoused inborn goodness and a knowledge of God at birth. The “sentiment of religion,” an inner divinity, was to be cultivated through self-improvement and service. Emerson substituted “Nature” for God, proposing that the soul was roused most readily on walks in the woods or on a muddy common, apart from society. And it was Emerson who turned Transcendentalist inner divinity into the secular gospel of Self-Reliance. “I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me,” he boasted.

However, Emerson’s extreme doctrine of individualism was an utter contradiction of the visible, practical interdependence of Concord life. In his eagerness to elevate exemplars of his creed, Emerson plucked up young Thoreau, a nature-loving schoolteacher with a gift for classical languages, and encouraged his development as a representative character, “the man of Concord.” He even installed him beside Walden Pond on acreage he had bought on a whim. Each man perhaps chafed at communal and family constraints, laboring under an unwelcome sense of dependence.

Emerson's work not only influenced Whitman and Thoreau, but would continue to influence thinkers and writers in the United States and around the world down to the present. Notable thinkers who recognize Emerson's influence include Nietzsche and William James, Emerson's godson. There is little disagreement that Emerson was the most influential writer of 19c America. Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James were Emersonians in denial—while they set themselves in opposition to the sage, there was no escaping his influence.

The Transcendentalist movement was so successful because it rechanneled religious rhetoric to address modernizing shocks, otherwise unspoken, and tried to reassert an individual’s control of his fate. Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick has been read as a critique of Emerson's philosophy of self-reliance, embodied particularly in the life and death of Ahab. Melville's critique of self-reliance as a way of life is seen to lie in its destructive potential, especially when taken to extremes. Self-reliance was, for Melville, really the "[masquerade in kingly weeds of] a wild egoism, anarchic, irresponsible, and destructive."

Mark Cladis wrote a religious analysis of "Self-Reliance" which argues that individuals are "intimately connected to that which is greater than the self alone." While Emerson encourages his readers to understand that self-reliance is "freedom in a spiritual universe that is just as rule-governed as the Newtonian physical universe." Cladis clarifies that individuals are not expected to endure life alone, and that achieving self-reliance is understanding that "we are surrounded by helps and aids of all kinds, supporting us, sustaining us, journeying always with us."

I almost don’t mind that Emerson didn’t practice the self-reliance he preached, because I like how Emerson dealt with the progressive memory loss and aphasia, or language-loss, he suffered in his later years, likely due to what’s now known as dementia. By the mid-1870s, he struggled to recall names, words, or recent events, and his public lectures became challenging.

Emerson had friends and family, including his daughter Ellen and literary peers like James Russell Lowell, who supported him extensively. They accompanied him at events, helped manage his lectures, and ensured his comfort as his memory faded. Biographers note Emerson’s serene acceptance of his condition; calm and untroubled despite his confusion, often relying on his companions to fill in gaps. A specific anecdote from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. recalls Emerson cheerfully admitting his memory lapses during conversations, with a demeanor suggesting he was at peace because of his supportive circle. Emerson’s letters and accounts from his friends, as well as contemporary records, confirm his cognitive decline and dependence on others. For example, in The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph L. Rusk, it’s noted that Emerson would smile through his struggles. By the end of the 1870s, he forgot his own name at times and, if asked how he felt, would respond "Quite well; I have lost my mental faculties, but am perfectly well."

See, that’s how you deal with the onset of dementia—not with secret, increasing desperation while maintaining a false front, like one relative of mine, until everyone can notice and politely say nothing as you fade out of higher consciousness. Some people spend their lives quietly desperate. The cause is usually some trauma, usually in childhood. They don’t really live, or live free, after that, although that freedom can be regained. And the first hints of oncoming dementia won’t bother someone who is equanimous and has at least one friend, or the ability to make friends.

Recognizing the terminal nature of his tuberculosis, Thoreau spent his last years revising and editing his unpublished works, particularly The Maine Woods and Excursions, and petitioning publishers to print revised editions of A Week and Walden. He wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak to continue. His friends were alarmed at his diminished appearance and were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded, "I did not know we had ever quarreled." Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing.”