R.W. Emerson – Nature

Oversimplification!! (of the religious history)

Puritanism – Separitist movement, fleeing persecution from England, went to Holland and Spain, then left from new world, seperating away from the already set movement and came to America. Started in 1600's. Once settled, the factions begin and one becomes unitarianism.

Unitarianism – big in the 1800's. Because there was greater time for leisurely thinking, didn't really need intense puritanism anymore (which helped them survive). Why all this bickering and fighting, we don't need to be so particular about our religion and God.

Transcendentalism - (derived from German idealogist philosophy, the critique of pure reason, americans much more interested in spirit, movement, love and such) + (a correction of these previous thoughts, relationships on the world and still a continuation) – An emphasis on eastern religions, bringing unitarianism in and expanding it, Thoreau quotes from the Asian texts and Indian texts.



Emerson seems like it would be easy to “get bogged down” because Emerson has so many good one liners that you could just sit there and think on one line for two hours, but you must move on.

Emerson preachy, educated. Thoreau more gutteral, natural.

“Any sentence of an Emerson paragraph, or essay, may be taken to be the topic sentence.” -Stanley Cavell

Newtonian physics is becoming so prevelant at this time that the works can not help but have been influenced by it. Sometimes towards it, sometimes away.
He wants us to leave class today more confused than when we came in.
The quote about how nature deifies us makes me think of the connections with Wordsworth's “I wandered lonely as a cloud”..... taking us back to our youth

We are systematically going through the quotes, and now we are listening to the important lines that we underlined.

One of the favorite parts that I underlined was, “Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.” And all that I can think is that memory, imagination, and soul are all gathered together to make art, beauty, and eternity.

Phenomenon – a substance made out of matter, the tangible part

Noumenon – (what it is in its essence will never be accesible to us, what is the spirit of the item) – This is what the transcendentalists focus on.

The emerson cultural center, Hawthorne, Irving.... there is no Thoreau school. “Stimulate your own economy” and “Reducing your footprint”