Transcendentalism Comparison

Emerging in the mid-19th century, Transcendentalism became a key philosophical movement that allowed individuals to connect with nature and understand the concepts of spirituality and self-reliance. Many thought these ideas should be predominant in the intellectual reality of human beings. Not only did Transcendentalism focus on spirituality and self-reliance, but it also immersed itself in conceptualizing one’s intuition instead of understanding the reason or rational explanation for a certain notion. The Transcendentalist Movement began with two influential figures of the time, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. While they both were considered transcendentalists and shared several beliefs, they also possessed ideas that varied from one another in drastically

He does not try to explain the reason why nature is the way it is, he simply engulfs himself in its entirety, whereas Emerson would try to justify nature and its abstract characteristics. Besides nature, Emerson and Thoreau have a different way of looking at the world during the Transcendentalist period. Emerson looks at the world in a hypothetical sense wondering why things are the way they are, while Thoreau is more experimental and realistic in the choices he makes. To conclude, Emerson and Thoreau have similarities in their ideas, but they had drastic differences in the manner that surrounds nature and how the world was perceived from their perspective during the Transcendentalist Movement. Overall, Transcendentalism was a movement that took place in the mid-19th century that focused on idealistic individualism along with helping society understand the importance of nature and how one must be self-reliant to understand the truth of what life has to offer. Many important figures of the time thought society could benefit from an infiltration of these views into their everyday