American Literature / Unit 7 AML 0601 short lesson, about 20 seconds
What Transcendentalism Claimed
Captions available
The idea
Transcendentalism held that the individual can reach truth directly, through intuition and through nature, without a church or a book to mediate. Its adherents rejected institutions and dogma in favour of their own independence, and the anchor lists the values Emerson distilled: individualism, self-reliance, self-education, non-conformity.
In practice
Truth reached directly, without a mediator.
Where people slip
A philosophy of intuition, not of doctrine.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
- Nothing. This is a starting point.
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