Anti-Transcendentalism

After reading Melville’s Anti-Transcendentalist text, I am still torn on where I stand. I still don’t find myself a transcendentalist or an anti-transcendentalist. Like I stated in my original blog, I believe that there is good and evil in every being. It is all in how you look at things and which you choose to promote. There is no case where a person’s soul is only good or only bad.

In Fuller’s Leila, it is clear that her depiction of the human soul is a feminine force for good. It is a peaceful, clear pond. Melville’s Moby-Dick offers a very different picture of the dark depths of the soul lurking below us. In this way, both authors create vivid settings of the souls—the transcendentalist’s peaceful and serene, the anti-transcendentalist’s rough and disturbed.

Reading Melville’s piece I did find interest in his use of sex. He used the female figure as the weak, surface-level peace and the male figure as the powerful, deep, and churning inner-soul. He talks little of the relationship between them, but it can be inferred that they are together. They make up the person as a whole. For this reason, I think I can relate more so to anti-transcendentalism. I see that there are both forces of good and bad, but not that women are weaker or shallower. Good and bad, in this case women and men, are interwoven in the soul. 

Transcendentalism

It is hard to say whether I am or am not a transcendentalist. I should first mention that I do not claim affiliation with any religion, but the most recent regular attendance I had was at a Unitarian Universalist meeting house. I grew up with some Lutheran influence, especially from a summer camp that I visited and returned to for many summers. For this reason and because I am a very logical, science-minded person, there are many parts of transcendentalism that I don’t agree with. However, there are also numerous intellectual points that I do agree with in this ideology.

To begin, I don’t believe that we all have God’s light inside of us, but rather that we are neither good nor evil—we are neutral. It is possible to find the good and the evil in every person; it is simply in the eye of the beholder. Another thing that I disagree with is Emerson’s attitude towards society. He describes it as a “conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” I think that his reasoning behind this is unsound since society is just the interworking relationships between people. In this way it cannot be purely destructive.

On the other side, I completely agree that we must learn to accept ourselves. As Emerson says, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” I think that it is important to know yourself and know that you have the ability to be unique and original—to break free from conformity. Thoreau says something similar in his text about men being used as machines instead of consciences. He describes the more noble men who contribute their consciences, “A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also.”

Another point I agree with is Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience. He says in his text many times over that we should most certainly act against our government if it is not doing its job. We must take up arms and get things done. It is our government for a reason, and we must not let a corrupt few control it.

Overall, I would say that I share some ideology with transcendentalism, but since it is very romantic and less rooted in logic, I am not full-fledged. 

Emerson's Self-Reliance

Emerson’s idea of self is quite a noble one. He believes that everyone has the divine in them, and that we must learn to trust ourselves for that very reason. We should act as we wish and avoid conformity or repetition. We must not imitate, but instead travel new roads, think new thoughts, and be original people. We should cast off tangible things to focus on self-reliance, free of the support of the government or civil institutions.

His self is one that develops naturally to the person they are, not who society wants them to be. We need not travel to find who we are because it is inherent within us, as is our character. Knowing we are communicating not only with our voices, but also with our bodies, we must act in a way that promotes our character. 

Emerson’s thoughts on self are much deeper than one could ever fully grasp, but they are also limited. For example, he says that to be self-reliant means not relying on government, religion, or even society to protect our material things. I think he has a point that we must not be too caught up in materials, but it is important to understand that we live and breathe in a tangible world that requires certain materials. It is silly to cast off every material thing as something to be relied upon rather than a well-formed tool for humanity.

In this way, he offers a rather one sided argument describing a very individualized world, which we know is not how it is lived. Humans are a social species, which thrives on relationships and interactions—friendship, love, competitiveness, and family. It is impossible to isolate a person and call them self-reliant in Emerson’s terms; people are just too social. So again, his argument is limited in the sense that people should believe that others can bring happiness and joy.

We must simply remember that we must first find the happiness in ourselves before we can find it in others.