Chapter 2 Split Images of Thoreau: Literature Review
2.4 Review of the Literary Discussion of Thoreauvian Civil Disobedience
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2.4 Review of the Literary Discussion of Thoreauvian Civil Disobedience Despite the relative scarcity of literary scholarship on Thoreau’s “Civil
Disobedience” from a Transcendentalist perspective, some scholars connect the two in their research. Gura, Buell, and Taylor argue that Emerson’s Transcendentalist ideas – his notions of individualism and Self-Reliance, and, his political opinions –
contributed to Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience. Regarding the enactment of Transcendentalist doctrines, Packer, Johnstone, and Powell assert that Thoreau’s faith in Transcendentalism inspired him to act. Packer argues that Thoreau’s “Civil
Disobedience” demonstrates how a Transcendentalist bridges the gap between principle and action; Johnson views civil disobedience as a form of political action stemming from Transcendentalist principles; Powell believes that the
Transcendentalists’ insistence on action led to the Civil War. These critics affirm that enacting Transcendentalist ideals was crucial for Thoreau. Madden, von Frank, and Harding assert the importance of Higher Law in Thoreauvian civil disobedience.
Harding sees Higher Law as the law of conscience; Madden treats Higher Law as the core of Transcendentalist principle; von Frank insists that the abolitionists’ faith in Higher Law came from Transcendentalism. In short, in various ways, these scholars link Transcendentalism with Thoreauvian civil disobedience, even though most of them only refer to it in passing without specifically clarifying the connections or offering detailed textual analyses. Nevertheless, they still point out approaches to Thoreauvian disobedience that do not merely frame it in terms of politics, and I believe their concepts warrant further investigation in this dissertation.
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Chapter 3
The New England Philosophy: Transcendentalism
A product of its own specific religious and social conditions (Barbour 1), Transcendentalism was a uniquely American philosophical and religious movement that flourished from the 1830s through the 1860s and manifested itself in uniform ways (Habich and Nowatzki 89). Due to its elusiveness, defining Transcendentalism is a challenge for anyone attempting to cope seriously with the task of writing about it (Koster 1). Those associated with Transcendentalism were pressed to define the term in their own time. Emerson called it “Idealism as it exists in 1842” (Habich and Nowatzki 89). William Henry Channing labeled it “a vague yet exalting conception of the godlike nature of the human spirit” (Habich and Nowatzki 89). Octavius Brooks Frothingham described it as “a distinct philosophical system that was essentially poetical (Frothingham 136, 138). In Emerson Handbook, Frederic Ives Carpenter defines it as “a reassertion of the mystical basis of all religion” and was therefore
“primarily religious rather than philosophical” (128-29). Beneath these diverse interpretations lay a belief in the “immanence of God in man” (Goddard 122) – that the human soul can communicate directly with the divine. This belief leads to other important Transcendentalist tenets including:
the doctrine of self-reliance and individualism, the identity of moral and physical laws, the essential unity of all religions, complete tolerance, the negative nature of evil, absolute optimism, disregard for all external authority and tradition. (Goddard 4)
These recurring ideas permeated Transcendentalist works and “made a lasting
impression on the American character” (Hochfield 35). Donald N. Koster even claims
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that Transcendentalism set the tone – intellectual, moral, and spiritual – for an entire generation of Americans, and its impact “can be felt even to the present day” (Koster 1). Transcendentalist ideas about, for example, “self-reliance, the beauty of nature, and the importance of principled living” (Habich and Nowatzki 90) continue to inspire contemporary readers.
3.1 The Transcendental Club and the Transcendentalists
This section provides background about the Transcendentalists and describes the formation of the Transcendental Club. The Transcendentalists were a group of
nineteenth-century New England intellectuals with ties to Harvard College,
Unitarianism, and German Idealism. Through their regular meetings for theological, philosophical, and literary discussions, they came to be known, collectively, as the Transcendental Club.
3.1.1 The Transcendentalists
Active in the mid-nineteenth-century New England, the Transcendentalists were liberal thinkers from pedigreed families of greater Boston; many had ties to the Unitarian1 church or many were also graduates of Harvard University, and most of them had a distinct philosophical bent toward German Idealism. In Smith’s words, they were “Unitarian ministers, literary radicals and others with progressive leanings”
(Smith 29). Emerson served as the “spokesman of Transcendentalism” (Koster 1).
According to Gura, the Transcendentalists can be divided chronologically into two generations. Active from the 1830s to the 1840s, the first-generation
Transcendentalists – Emerson, Thoreau, and many others2 – remain the movement’s
1 According to Oxford English Dictionary, the term Unitarian refers to a “person who asserts the unity of God and rejects the doctrine of the Trinity.” Or, more specifically, a “member of a Church or religious body maintaining this belief and typically rejecting formal dogma in favor of a rationalist and inclusivist approach to belief” (OED).
2 According to Gura’s American Transcendentalism, the first-generation Transcendentalists included:
i) Unitarian clergymen: Orestes Brownson, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke,
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best-known representatives for contributing classic Transcendentalist works such as Nature and Walden. Active from the 1840s to the 1860s, the second-generation Transcendentalists included Frothingham and others3 who contributed historical biographies, criticism, and analyses. The two generations of Transcendentalists not only complemented each other in terms of literary contributions but also shared similar values. Gura reiterates Noah Porter’s notion that the Transcendentalists were alike “in their intellectual and moral dispositions, [and] their favorite philosophical and literary sympathies” (Gura 6) and therefore their “modes of thought and
expression” (Gura 6) possessed a “strong family likeness” (Gura 6). This family-like connection naturally led them to form a cadre: the Transcendental Club.
3.1.2 The Transcendental Club
Initiated by Emerson, the Transcendental Club was an ever-shifting and open-ended group of like-minded people who conducted occasional meetings between 1836 and 1848, engaged in conversation, and shared inspiration (Gura 5; Cabot 249; Smith 90). Like-minded as they were, they had different ideas about the name of their group.
Some participants were uncomfortable with the term Transcendental, believing it implied “transcending common-sense, airy, flighty, ideal” (Goddard 6) in an
uncomplimentary sense. Nonetheless, as Carpenter, Packer, and Goddard explain, the Transcendentalists eventually accepted the moniker with cheerful defiance. In
“Transcendentalism,” Carpenter describes the Transcendentalists’ change in attitude regarding this label: “If Transcendentalism seemed sometimes vague and immaterial,
Christopher Cranch, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederic Henry Hedge, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Cyrus Bartol, Charles Timothy Brooks, John Sullivan Dwight, Convers Francis, William Henry Furness, William B. Greene, Samuel Robbins, Caleb Stetson, and Thomas T. Stone.
ii) Prominent women: Elizabeth Peabody, Sophia Ripley, and Margaret Fuller.
iii) Emerson’s protégés: Henry David Thoreau, Jones Very, William Ellery Channing, Charles King Newcomb and Charles Stearns Wheeler.
3 The second generation of Transcendentalists included David Wasson, John Weiss, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Longfellow, Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Franklin Sanborn.
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it also seemed sometimes revolutionary and practical” (Carpenter 23). They were proud to be seen as revolutionary; they wanted to be “the renewers of spiritual life”
(Packer 48) and the “prophet[s] and preacher[s]” (Goddard 196) who “exemplified their doctrines in pure and noble lives” (Goddard 199). In being transcendental, they regarded themselves as model revolutionary intellectuals.
Some participants also took issue with the term Club, claiming they were like-minded rather than same-like-minded (Smith 29). For example, James Freeman Clarke asserted: “No two thought alike” (Gura 5); Frederic Henry Hedge claimed that they did not agree in all opinions but merely “in spirit” (Smith 29). Still, Gura, Packer, Smith, Habich and Nowatzki describe the Transcendental Club as a “loose
confederation” (Gura 5; Habich and Nowatzki 90) and a “coterie affair” (Packer 48) that stably enabled the Transcendentalists to develop brilliant “idea[s], plan[s], or project[s]” (Smith 31). The existence of the club and the efforts of the
Transcendentalists served as the foundation for Transcendentalism.
3.2 New England Transcendentalism
According to Goodman, Transcendentalism was an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered on Emerson.
Frothingham claims that Transcendentalism received less attention in other countries but blossomed in and influenced daily American life:
In Germany and France, there was a transcendental philosophy . . . but it never affected society in its organized institutions or practical interests. In old England, this philosophy influenced poetry and art, but left the daily existence of men and women untouched. But in New England, the ideas entertained by the foreign thinkers took root in the native soil and blossomed out in every form of social life. (Frothingham 105)
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Goddard, Kenneth Walter Cameron, Carpenter, and Martin S. Day all agree that, unlike its counterparts in other countries, New England Transcendentalism had multiple dimensions. Goddard defines Transcendentalism as “a literary movement, a philosophy, and a religion all in one” (196). Cameron describes it as “a warm and intuitional religious, aesthetic, philosophical and ethical movement” (2). In
“Transcendentalism,” Carpenter claims it was a four-faceted movement that integrated Kantian philosophy, Puritan religion, practical social reform, and an American literary renaissance (24). In “Renaissance in New England,” Day insists that
Transcendentalism derived its central ideas from Puritan New England, romanticism, Neo-Platonism, German idealistic philosophers, and Oriental mystical writings (81-82). From these descriptions, I select four crucial dimensions – the religious, the philosophical, the literary, and the political – to elucidate the various dimensions of Transcendentalism. The product of a specific time and place, Transcendentalism was more than a singular event; it was a movement that, at its core, combined the Puritan religion, a label from and affinity for Kantian philosophy, a renaissance in American literature, and a political ethos that overlapped with abolitionism.
3.2.1 Transcendentalism in Religion
Regarding whether Puritanism or German philosophy exerted more influence on the formation of New England Transcendentalism, Carpenter insists that the
Transcendentalists “developed the religious idealism of their Puritan past primarily and only borrowed the forms and phrases of German thought secondarily” (26).
Indeed, Transcendentalism’s origins were religious. Most of the Transcendentalists were “men of religion, both by training and by temperament” (Carpenter 26) and over half of them were Unitarian clergymen. The salient characteristics – a practical attitude, a simplified lifestyle, and a moral disposition – of seventeenth-century
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Puritans persisted in their nineteenth-century descendants, the New England Transcendentalists.
3.2.1.1 The Seventeenth-Century Puritan Forbearers
Puritanism exerted a significant influence on Transcendentalism. Goddard claims that the Transcendentalists “were Puritans to the core” (188). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Puritan specifically refers to “a group of English Protestants of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who regarded the Reformation of the Church under Elizabeth I as incomplete and sought to simplify and regulate forms of worship” (OED); more generally, the term Puritan also refers to individuals “with censorious moral beliefs” (OED). Goddard claims that the most visible Puritan features of Transcendentalism were “the sincerity, the purity, the moral heroism, the noble and unselfish adherence to an ideal” (189). Summarizing these notions, I
identify three salient characteristics of Puritanism: 1) practicality, 2) simplicity, and 3) morality. First, Puritans believed in practical action. They pursued better lives by sailing to an unknown land; after reaching America, their practicality enabled them to survive and prosper within a short time. Second, Puritans favored simplicity. They not only wanted to purify rituals but also to eliminate excess in all areas of life (clothing, food, entertainment, etc.). Third, Puritans emphasized personal morality. They aimed to demonstrate virtue by behaving morally, working hard, and living moderately. In short, the seventeenth-century Puritan ancestors of the Transcendentalists embraced practicality, simplicity, and morality.
3.2.1.2 The Nineteenth-Century Puritan Transcendentalists
Two hundred years later, the Puritan emphasis on living a practical, simplified, and moral life still influenced the Transcendentalists. First, despite how apparently impractical they were, almost all the Transcendentalists had stable incomes to support
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themselves. According to Packer, in order to “speak truth habitually” (101), they acquired “not only a tough soul but also a steady income” (101). Emerson was a lecturer; Thoreau was a surveyor; Peabody owned a bookshop, and Brownson was a writer and an editor for a quarterly review (Packer 101). They were not unrealistic and quixotic idealists who shirked their worldly responsibilities; instead, they tried to balance the spiritual and material in practical ways. Second, the Transcendentalists advocated simplicity. The best example was Alcott Bronson’s Fruitland community experiment, which forbade animal products (meat, fish, butter, cheese, eggs, milk), imported goods (tea, coffee, syrup, rice), and goods produced from slave-labor (cotton). By eliminating all unnecessary goods, the Fruitlanders showed their
willingness to live a simpler life. Third, the Transcendentalists were moral and eager to undertake conscientious action to improve society. For example, Thoreau, Parker, and Emerson advocated abolitionism; Fuller and Sophia Ripley championed women’s rights; Alcott and Peabody pioneered educational reform (Habich and Nowatzki 90).
In embracing practicality, simplicity, and morality, the Transcendentalists resembled their ancestors. Van Wyck Brooks connects them precisely: “They had returned, on another level, to the mental habits of their Pilgrim forbears” (Brooks 187; Koster 12).
3.2.1.3 Puritan Heritage as the Indigenous Influence
While many critics believe that the ideas of the New England Transcendentalist were “importations, not native American growths” (Miller 64), Goddard, Perry Miller, and George Willis Cooke insist that Transcendentalism’s Puritan legacy was
indigenously American. Goddard writes: “The Puritan blood was still within their veins. Transcendentalism was a gospel” (191). In the introduction to The Poets of Transcendentalism, Cooke argues that it would be “unjust to regard it as an
importation from Europe” (3) because, she asserts, “Transcendentalism was native to
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America” (3): its features “had been in the American mind for generations, perhaps from the first coming of the Puritans” (Cooke 3). Likewise, Miller claims that the
“Puritan effort” to confront “divinity in the physical universe” (3) was the root of the Transcendentalist soul. Regarding the connection between Puritan heritage and Transcendentalism, Goddard concludes explicitly: “They were Puritan to the core.
This . . . was the signally American contribution to transcendentalism” (188).
3.2.2 Transcendentalism in Philosophy
According to Goddard, the word transcendental has been used in two distinct senses: the first is more philosophical and refers to the eighteenth-century Kantian discourse; the second is more popular and refers to the nineteenth-century New
England movement centered on Emerson. German Idealism, represented by Immanuel Kant, highlights the importance of mind, consciousness, and self-knowledge. The New England Transcendentalists adapted this German philosophy to create a new and distinctly New England philosophy of their own.
3.2.2.1 Root: German Idealism
Transcendentalism is linked with German Idealism – especially Kantian
transcendental philosophy – for two reasons. First, the Transcendentalists had such “a distinct philosophical bent toward German Idealism” (Gura 5) that Emerson even once defined Transcendentalism as “Idealism as it appears in 1842” (Koster 2).
Second, Kant was the first to link the word transcendental to a philosophy (Koster 8).
For these reasons, Transcendentalism is usually linked with Kantian philosophy.
According to Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Idealism consists of two fundamental concepts: consciousness and self-knowledge. First, consciousness is the foundation of reality; the mental apparatus (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality. Second, proponents of Idealism believe that
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everything that we can know about this mind-independent reality is permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind, which means that all forms of knowledge must be considered forms of self-knowledge. In other words, Idealists believe that the mental world is the foundation of the physical world. Kant and other4 leaders of the eighteenth-century German Idealism movement “championed the inherent powers of the human mind” (Gura 6). By integrating the term transcendental into philosophical discourse, Kant contributed the most. Kantian transcendental philosophy was a systematic exposition of the nature of the a priori knowledge that space and time are natural to the human mind and prior to the experience of the physical senses (Koster 9). The distinction German Idealism drew between the
physical world and the mental world and the emphasis it placed on consciousness and self-knowledge exerted significant influence on the New England Transcendentalists.
3.2.2.2 Fruit: New England Transcendental Philosophy
Planted in New England soil, the seed of German philosophy produced distinctly American fruit, New England Transcendentalism. According to Day, “while the very label of the movement comes from the Germans, the American Transcendentalists paid little heed to the complexities of German metaphysics” (82). Likewise, in
“Transcendentalism,” Carpenter points out that, since the name Transcendental had long been associated with Kant, many historians of philosophy have sought to
“identify New England Transcendentalism with Kantianism” (24). However, Carpenter determines that Emerson did not express any theoretical or practical identification with Kantianism and that Emerson derived Transcendentalism only from a “diluted form of Kant’s philosophy,” (24) as interpreted by Samuel Taylor
4 A group of eighteenth-century philosophers gave rise to German Idealism: Immanuel Kant with Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Johann Fichte with Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (1796), Friedrich Schelling with System of Transcendental Idealism (1798), and Georg Hegel with The
Phenomenology of Spirit (1806).
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Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle. In fact, most of the Transcendentalists were not interested in the strictly philosophical sense of the term, and they only borrowed
“forms and phrases of German thought” (Carpenter 26) instead of seeing themselves as official disciples of German Idealism.
The New England Transcendentalists used the term Transcendental in a flexible way, connoting various other terms including “innate, original, universal, a priori, [and] intuitive” (Goddard 3). In their lifetimes, Transcendentalism was considered 1)
“a way of perceiving the world, centered on individual consciousness rather than on external fact” (Gura 8) and 2) “a doctrine concerning the mind, [about] its ways of acting and methods of getting knowledge” (Goddard 4). The Transcendentalists built their philosophy on the basis of these notions about consciousness and the mind. In short, New England Transcendentalism’s elastic links with German Idealism concern the term transcendental and a shared emphasis on the mental world; in a strictly theoretical sense, however, Transcendentalism deviated from its German antecedent.
3.2.3 Transcendentalism in Literature
In literature, Transcendentalism has been viewed as part of the broader Romantic Movement (Koster 8). Starting in Europe, Romanticism was a “reaction against the materialism and ordinariness of modern life, particularly the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment” (Habich and Nowatzki 69). Habich and Nowatzki associate the promotion of individualism, the celebration of nature, and opposition to reason, logic, and empirical observation with Romanticism, and they assert that these beliefs and doubts share features with those of Transcendentalism (69). To many critics,
Transcendentalism was “the American tributary of European Romanticism” (Koster 2). However, the New England Transcendentalists regarded British authors as more essential mentors to them than authors from continental Europe.
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3.2.3.1 Root: British Romantic Literature
Among British Romantic authors, Coleridge and Carlyle had the most significant influence on New England Transcendentalism. The distinction Coleridge drew
between Reason and Understanding offered a solution to the spiritual dilemma the Unitarian-Transcendentalist writers confronted. Coleridge sees Reason as a
supersensuous and intuitive power, the source of morality and the highest levels of intellection; meanwhile, in his view, Understanding is the humbler servant that works by combining and comparing ideas derived from sensation and helps people reflect and generalize – equivalent to Science or Knowledge (Packer 24; Koster 10).
According to Packer, many of the Unitarian-Transcendentalists wanted to
simultaneously maintain the “values of tolerance and rational inquiry” (24) and the
“hunger for contact with the transcendent” (25); the potential conflicts between these two impulses bothered them. However, embracing Coleridge’s notion that Reason and Understanding are compatible intellectual functions enabled them to continue their quest for physical and spiritual truth.
Carlyle’s significance stems from his translations of German thought, a composition of Carlylean philosophy, and the encouragement he gave academics.
First, as a translator, Carlyle’s translations of Goethe and essays about German Romantic Idealism provided “tremendous stimulus to American Transcendentalism”
(Koster 10). Second, as an author, Carlyle accentuates the ideas of self-culture (Packer 35), wonder in nature (Koster 10), and “the everlasting NOW” (Koster 10), which resonated with the New England Transcendentalists, especially Emerson, who articulates a similar view in Nature. Finally, as a mentor, Carlyle encouraged men of letters to fulfill their duty: “Literary Men are the appointed interpreters of [the] Divine
(Koster 10). Second, as an author, Carlyle accentuates the ideas of self-culture (Packer 35), wonder in nature (Koster 10), and “the everlasting NOW” (Koster 10), which resonated with the New England Transcendentalists, especially Emerson, who articulates a similar view in Nature. Finally, as a mentor, Carlyle encouraged men of letters to fulfill their duty: “Literary Men are the appointed interpreters of [the] Divine