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Girard's Arguments Against Transcendentalism

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Professor Girard claims that Emerson is not transcendentalist and he brings some reasons to admit this idea. He says that because Emerson had no system who was more poet than philosopher. He asserts that due to Emerson rationalism, he did not allow reason to come up and many more reasons. This animosity shows itself when Emerson in one of his interview mentioned �they are not good citizen�� Girard believes that transcendentalism has religious aspects but he cannot deny that transcendentalism has philosophical aspects as well. He says England has two distinct phase in which first one is up to 1835 and then the second phase started.
Religion
If we accept his view regarding Emerson, writer of this essay try to justify his ideas against what Girard …show more content…

In another words his religion is far from pure intellectual and what is very crystal clear is that for him religion is not institutional but individual.
Philosophy
Philosophical aspects are the integral parts of the transcendentalism for sure and excluding
Emerson from this idea is not fair for both side either for transcendentalism or Emerson.
People of his time had a kind of pure spiritual believes and Emerson specifically wanted to find a philosophical foundation in which people can feel the presence of the divine elements in their soul. In this respect he attempts to make a comparison between the ideal and the real.
He was interested mostly in philosophical system in a way that intuition is at its origin and the moral conclusion is at the end.
First step is symbolism of nature .Girard calls Emerson�s �metaphysical ramblings� which was not true. Emerson in his book nature treated spiritual characters very well known.
The world is a divine creation projected into unconscious. �Intellect is primary, …show more content…

That is to say Intellect is for Emerson the chief transcendental faculty. Concentration and expansion are the two modes of its activities. �Intellect is "the power of carrying every fact to successive platforms and of disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion," expansions being "of the very essence of thought." Intellect is the power to see the two sides and the many sides of things, to reduce them to unity. Intellect "detaches." Out of the field of results, of practical and selfish ends, it presents ideas as independent objects for

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