Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Dictionary.com or Dictionarys.rus or something like that, transcendentalism is described as:

1. an idealistic philosophical and social movement which developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures.

2. a system developed by Immanuel Kant, based on the idea that, in order to understand the nature of reality, one must first examine and analyze the reasoning process which governs the nature of experience.

Or, in every day English:

People have knowledge that comes from intuition and/or imagination that goes beyond sensory knowledge or logic and people can trust themselves to be their own authority on what is right. Therefore, ideas, and not religion, is the path to understanding life and whatnot. Or there bouts.

I can kinda get behind that.
Except for the parts that I can't get behind. (There's a bit more to it than that, as most philosophies are. 😉)

I'm just interested and thought I'd take a look, so, Lucky You, you're about to learn something...

Transcendentalism was a mostly nineteenth century thing, though it started waaay back with Plato who was heard to say:

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I say, knowledge is the food of the soul.

__________
 

And weeks pass since beginning this post, as they do.
I'll post it for the fun of looking super-intellectual to you.

😆

I was going to explore this some more
but with my new job,
my brain is jelly