Written Response

Self-reliance is defined as the need for each individual to follow his or her own instincts and ideas.

Should people make their own decisions, or should they seek guidance from experts and authorities about life’s important matters?

Take a position on this issue. Support your response with reasons and specific examples in 3 Paragraphs.

American Transcendentalis

m“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person,

‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emotion

Supernatural

Atmosphere

Nature

Individual

Subjectivity

Transcendentalism Gothic

Romanticism

Transcendentalism

• Proposes a belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason.

• Suggests that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own, through intuition

Deism

• Transcendentalism was strongly influenced by Deism, which although rationalist, was opposed to Calvinist orthodoxy.

• Deists hold that a certain kind of religious knowledge is either inherent in each person or accessible though the exercise of reason.

Deism• Transcendentalism also involved a

rejection of strict Puritan religious attitudes

• Unlike the Puritans, the Transcendentalists saw humans and nature as possessing an innate goodness.

Born Bad or Good?

PuritansSinful

TranscendentalistsGood

EnlightenmentBlank Slate

The Influence of Romanticism

• The celebration of • individualism• the beauty of nature• the virtue of humankind

Nature & the Oversoul• Transcendentalist writers expressed semi-

religious feelings toward nature• They saw a direct connection between the

universe & the individual soul• Divinity permeated all objects, animate or

inanimate• The purpose of human life was union with

the “Oversoul” – a sort of convergence of the individual, God & Nature

The Oversoul

• Nature

• Individual• God

“In the faces of men and women I see God.” – Walt Whitman

“The groves were God’s first temples”– Willam Cullen Bryant

Transcendental BeliefsIntuition, not reason, is the highest human

facultyA rejection of materialismSimplicity is the path to spiritual greatnessNature is a source of truth & inspirationNon-conformity, individuality & self-reliance

“Self-Reliance”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson Quotes• “The reward of a thing well done, is to

have done it.” • “I hate quotations. Tell me what you

know.”• “What lies behind us and what lies before

us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

• “Make yourself necessary to someone.”

Reading

“Self-Reliance”Page 393-394

Answer the Following:1.What does the passage beginning with “Trust thyself” tell you about Emerson’s belief in the individual?2.What evidence does Emerson use in this paragraph to support this?

Break Out

1. What aspects of our society today reflect Emerson’s belief in self-reliance?

2. What terms does Emerson use to describe society? What does he say is the main purpose?

3. What evidence does Emerson use to support his claim that “to be great is to be misunderstood”?

Lost in Translation

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds[…]”

What does Emerson mean by this quote?

“Civil Disobedience”Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau Quotations

• “Things do not change; we change.”• “The only danger in Friendship is that it will

end.” • “The best way to correct a mistake is to

make it right.”• “When I hear music I fear no danger, I am

invulnerable, I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.”

Civil Disobedience

• Written after Thoreau spent a night in jail after refusing to pay a poll tax.

• Thoreau refused to pay the $1.50 tax because the revenues went to the government which was allowing slavery to continue and which was waging an unjust war against Mexico.

“Civil Disobedience”

• Influenced individuals such as Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. & Cesar Chavez

Click on photo for info about each

person

Reading

Civil DisobediencePage: 416-417

Answer the Following:1. What does Thoreau consider the best type of

government?2. What is Thoreau asking the reader to do?

Exit

Re-examine the opening paragraph of this selection.

Paraphrase (Re-state) Thoreau’s philosophy in your own words