Transcendentalism Books

If you were asked what historical New Englander loved solitude and independence, kept a life-long journal, combined interests in natural theology, idealist philosophy and romantic poetry, and influenced several of the most important thinkers of the 1800s, would you guess it was Ralph Waldo Emerson's aunt?

Author Phyllis Cole no doubt wrote this book primarily for other scholars. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it for several reasons. I love memoirs and biographies, and it is a detailed portrait of a remarkable and eccentric woman and of the difficult times she lived in. I have an interest in the evolution of ideas, and it describes how certain concepts were passed on and transformed through different lives and times. And I am fascinated by Transcendental philosophy, and here is the woman who, the author demonstrates, had such a profound influence on her nephew that Transcendentalism and all that came from it might not have existed in the same form without her.

Mary Moody Emerson was a woman who had to struggle against her times, which accounts for her later eccentricities. She lost her father early and grew up as almost a servant to her relatives, was never properly schooled but learned from the books she collected, avoided marriage and remained independent against the tide of her times, and sought self-expression through writing in her "Almanack," and through the influence she brought to bear on her friends and family. When Waldo and his brothers were still small children and their father, her brother, died, she stepped in to help raise the boys, and encouraged them all to be exceptional.

Always deeply religious, in her old age Mary looked forward to dying and took to wearing a white woolen shroud in anticipation. The author concludes, "Mary's famed death obsession was in fact a life obsession, a hunger for fulfillment perceived as impossible on earth." There is no surviving picture of Mary Moody Emerson, but this book is her remarkable portrait.

Tom Murphy is a young Irish-American attorney working in Washington D.C. as a U.S. Army lawyer in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Like most Americans, he was fiercely patriotic and wanted to serve his country. But the assignment he was given bothered him. He was assigned to report on the internment process of Japanese American citizens who were rounded up and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. Although he loved and respected the President and was proud to be in the U.S. Army, this was a task that was abhorrent to him. It affected him deeply, hurt his relationship with his girlfriend and embarrassed him in front of his family. He was in the Army though, and had to take orders. This wasn't easy for him.

How this all plays out is his personal story. But it is also a story of a time and a place in history that was a blight on America. Supposedly, this was about security for Americans. But this internment was only directed against the Japanese and there was also pressure from West Coast nativist groups with political clout.

The author takes the reader inside some of these camps where we meet one Japanese American family briefly. We also meet a hard-working administrator who needs to get drunk every night because his job is so distasteful to him. We feel the passion in the country to fight the war. And we see the propaganda that the public is fed about the need for this program.

I could identify with young Tom Murphy who, with a small group of concerned people, tried to change things. Eventually things did change, but not before thousands of Japanese Americans had spent several years in the camps. This was a story that needed to be told and I thank Mr. Brennan for bringing this important subject to light in a work of fiction.

William Temple, Nature, Man, and God, 1932-34.

William Temple stands in a great line of Archbishops of Canterbury, as remote in time as Anselm and as current at Michael Ramsey and Rowan Williams. All of these men combine brilliant intellects with a living spirituality. Most of their works are not easy reading--nor are the works of Julian of Norwich, Richard Hooker, Charles Gore, and Evelyn Underhill, who also are participants and contributors to this Anglo-Catholic stream of Christian practice. For those who believe the gifts of the human mind may be in fruitful service of the heart of faith, this book of Temple's, the 1932-34 Gifford lectures, is solid grist for the mill.

Temple was the Archbishop of Canterbury for a little more than three years during World War II, before his relatively early death. He was a leader in his era of the ecumenical movement in Christianity, and was known for a remarkable personal facility for winning co-operation, as well as for proactively engaging social and economic issues in relation to Christian values. Among Anglicans and Episcopalians his Readings in John's Gospel has been his most widely read and appreciated work.

These lectures contain a variety of highly creative and independent engagements with the encounter of Christian theism with modernist perspectives. The lectures are in fact exercises in "natural theology," that is, how reason and experience may approach and seek to come to terms with religious revelation. Temple's characteristically Anglican "Via Media" theology may be seen in this book as distinct from the modernist premises which are more typical of Liberal Protestantism and which still are so influential in the split between thought and religious experience which may be found in many contemporary Protestant seminaries, and much contemporary mentality. This is perhaps clearest in his treatment of the philosophy of Kant and Descartes. To use post-modernist terms, Temple offers an incisive deconstruction of Descartes' view that disembodied thought is the genesis of experience and truth. In this Temple participates in 20th century early childhood development theory, and contemporary learning theory, in which cognition is grounded in dynamic relationship and emotion.

In this, Temple is reworking Anselm's own creative engagement with thought and faith. Compare Anselm's statement "He who does not believe, will not experience, and he who has not experienced will not understand" with Temple:

Orthodoxy is constantly refashioned so that its permanent essence may be synthesized with an ever growing range of experience. . . While in the individual, experience very largely depends on belief, and this again on tradition, it is none the less true that in the totality of religious history tradition and belief depend upon experience. . . the growth of religion as a dynamic force comes rather from the side of religious experience.

In Temple and Rowan Williams we can see a suspicion of modernist rationalism which has produced over-ideologized developments in scientism, Marxism, critical theory, some forms of feminism, atheism, and various religious fundamentalisms.

Temple's grounding of thought in the more primary modality of "experience" may be seen in his still-relevant chapters "Spiritual Authority and Experience," "Revelation and it's Mode," and "The Sacramental Universe." The writing on the universe as sacrament is its own presentation of Hebrew, Celtic, and other pre-modern views of the natural environment, as well as a 1930's version of contemporary eco-psychology. Here are samples of Temple's characteristic "way":

Infallible direction for practical action is not to be had either from Bible or Church or Pope or individual communing with God; and this is not through any failure of a wise and loving God to supply it, but because in whatever degree reliance upon such infallible direction come in, spirituality goes out. Intelligent and responsible judgement is the privilege and burden of spirit or personality.

So too sound doctrine assists the psychological organism, which is man, an organism now recognized to be spiritual as well as aesthetic and animate, to achieve satisfactory adjustment toand intercourse with its environment, now known to be divine as well as beautiful and nutritive.

Temple's term the "Spirit of the Whole"--perhaps not always named "God" by many-- provides doorways for human planet-sharers for pilgrimage with each other, whether they be Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims or non-rigid reasoners:

So long as the self retains initiative it can only fix itself upon itself as centre. Its hope of deliverance is to be uprooted from that centre and drawn to find its centre in God, the Spirit of the Whole.

One thinks of the prayer of the Jains: From the unreal, lead us to the real.

Da Free John is Adi Da Now and almost no one reviews his older books other than sycophants within Adidam. This is mostly due to the notoriety he has achieved thanks to the web. As an outsider, I still appreciate his creative, pioneering, eccentric, controversial renderings of the eastern teachings into western language. Nirvanasara is an anomaly of sorts,in relation to his other books, which makes it quite an interesting read. His reading of Buddhism, side by side with Advaita Vedanta is an under- appreciated attempt at an Integral approach, inspite of some problematic aspects of his languaging and the way the presentation seems strange and cultic and provides much for people to get hung up on, nonetheless, you can benefit from this unique book if you are open and discerning and able to use your intuition, then you may extract useful knowledge and insight and inspiration, anyway!! Read It Transcendentally!!!

In this book Kant goes wild and applies his philosophical system to everything, particular physics. This should be considered one of the great seminal works of philosophy. It was certainly written by a genius.

Was Kant right? Probably. Who knows?

It's 1846 and you find yourself in Concord, Massachusetts. Who's there? And what's it like to live there? Those questions and more are answered by Paul Brooks in this fine book. He uses a humanities approach to uncover the history of culture, politics, education, literacy, and women's lives in this one particular area of New England. And you won't run into just the usual familiar families -- the Emersons, Hawthornes, Thoreaus, and Alcotts -- but will learn of other folks of Concord as well: farmer George Minott, lawyer Samuel Hoar, doctor Josiah Bartlett, and constable Sam Staples, to name a few. One chapter is devoted entirely to the operation of Brook Farm, a utopian community founded by Dr. George Ripley that was beginning to struggle by the year in question. Photos of key people and period illustrations augment the very readable text. If you like pre-Civil War American history or are enamored with any of the authors mentioned above, pick this title up at the nearest used bookstore. You won't be disappointed.

Co-written by a licensed psychologist and a holistic healer, Transcendental Illuminations: Autobiographies of a Seeker and a Saint is a work of vision and spirituality, written expressly to aid other seekers on their long journey. Transcendtal Illuminations avoides dogma in its quest for Truth unfettered by the limitations of philosophy, science, or theology. Transcendental Illuminations does not shy away from presenting metaphysical arguments about sensitive topics such as abortion (the claim is made that whether one has an abortion is based on God's predetermined dharma for each individual soul experience, and therefore there is no transgression against God). Though strongly opinionated at times, Transcendental Illuminations clearly reflects the passionate beliefs of the authors and their personal revelations in their search for understanding of the infinite.

"Transcendental Philosophy" is a general term designating a particularly rigorous approach to knowledge usually associated with Kant and such later thinkers as Husserl and the early Heidegger.

This volume is concerned not only with transcendental philosophy but with the intersection of transcendental philosophy and everyday life, or experience. The importance of the intersection between transcendental philosophy and everyday life is obvious, now more than ever, in a period typified by rising skepticism about the social relevance of philosophy.

Over the centuries until, say, Husserl, the link of philosophy to social reality has more frequently been presupposed than critically examined. It is now as important as it ever was to determine just how philosophy relates to the world in which we live, in particular to scrutinize the role a philosopher can reasonably expect, or be expected, to play within society, in short the extent to which he or she can usefully contribute to enlightening us about the world and ourselves.

The authors contributing to this collection have all previously worked on issues and problems normally connected with German philosophy in general, and Kand and/or Husserl in particular. Their contributions offer different interpretations, written from different perspectives, either on the overall themes of transcendental philosophy, or on the intersection between transcendental philosophy and everyday life.

Contributing authors include Joseph Margolis, J.N. Mohanty, Erazim Kohak, Tom Rockmore, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Carr, Vladimir Zeman, Peter McCormick, Allister Neher, Dagfinn Follesdal and Dallas Laskey.

4 1/2 stars, really, but we can't do that. This is the original 1855 version. Whitman added to the collection throughout his life, ending up with an overstuffed and very uneven "deathbed" version, which is better known. There are some good poems in it which aren't in the original, such as When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd, but there's a lot of pretty weak stuff, too. The 1855 has a small number of pretty consistently excellent poems which are highly original and loosely but definitely connected. Reading it is a very different experience from wading through the bloated, inconsistent final version - there's something Whitmanesque (i.e., at it's best) about the original collection as a unit. Malcolm Cowley's introduction is also a bit wild and wooly (written in the late 60s or early 70s), but interesting and enlightening.

At least as available for the Kindle, this is not the 1855 edition. It seems to be the final edition, which is of course great, but not what I intended to get based on the product description posted. Also, the foreward and afterward mentioned in the description are missing. I don't expect the moon for a low price, but I do expect to get what I pay for.

Choosing the fullest, most complete version of Whitman's text, before the final editing of the deathbed edition, but following the additions made after the Civil War, the Norton Critical is a must have for students of poetry, or literature, and of nature. The wild, ecstatic hunger for the world, the ravishment of the senses, as Norman Mailer put it (though not about Whitman), the mysticism of the flesh, Whitman is, arguably, the most accomplished poet of American letters.

A must read for poets, students, and pagans (Whitman as spirit of the Green Man himself!).

I bought this and returned it. There must be someone out there with the right voice and reading skills to bring us Whitman's words and rhythms. Ms. Gibson's soprano sing-song doesn't make it.

There seems to be some confusion, both in the editorial reviews and the customer reviews, about what edition is being referred to in this listing. the first editorial review correctly discusses the first edition as shorter and "less bloated" than the deathbed edition. however, the rest of the reviews seem to discuss either edition indiscriminately.

the two are effectively different books. the cover shown is of the first edition including an illuminating essay by malcolm cowley--that's certainly the edition I prefer, and I hope thats what you would get if you ordered this.

Its was a well done order i had no troblems receivin it. It came on time.

Thanks for offering this product --- I had been looking for this and found it in great condition used from Amazon. It arrived on time and all went well with the transaction. Thanks for making things so easy.

As an avid reader of history, poetry, philosophy and our founding prinicples; I found this book an excellent read.

Although I agree that Emerson may trt to make every individual see their own specific capabilites, inner strengths and power and their own worth; he did so under the premise that God and faith and moral truth were always there (and required) to attain such independence and I never got the impression that he ever turned away from faith or Divine inspiration as the foundation for "living well" and living life to its fullest.

He correctly addressed his displeasure with the entrenched trappings of those so engrossed in symbolism and dogma that many a religious figure and religious organization had wandered away from the light and the truth of what being moral and "holly" (for lack of a better term)really are.

He warned of putting too much trust and faith in those with fancy words, programs or gimmick when talking about truth, because we often find, they may seem to be wise, but they just take us for a ride in the clouds of hope and we are generally let down when we find out that they are as lost as anyone else on how we can truly find the path back to or closer to our creator.

Throughout this book I found just one inconsistency, one undelying war going on in his words. It was the Ying and Yang battle going on beneath the surface for me as i read this work, there seemed to be two opposing/fighting viewpoints).

The one warned us of false intellectuals and false philosophies and false leaders and how they pretend to know the way to salvation, forgiveness and ascension...yet in the second he gave poets way too much credit for being near godlike in their understanding of the universe.

Now I agree that poets see things in many cases with clearer eyes (or that special inner eye) for I have dabbled in poetry myself and found if very rewarding in the expressions of self from a seemingly higher plane; but I certainly do not give that godlike status that Eerson seems to ascribe to them.

However there is so much profound wisdom in this book, and Emerson deserves great credit for his powers of thought and his ability to make us think, that even I could not leave it for long without wanting to come back and finish it.

His words will certainly cause me to ponder the wisdom of his remarks for the rest of my days. An essential read for the critical mind.

While the text contains some real gems of Emersonian thought (i.e. Divinity School Address and Self-Reliance) it is not an adequate representation of his better works, leaving out "Nature," "The American Scholar" and other more important and influential essays. I, personally, order this text for my Freshman English classes because it's cheap and gives two exemplary representations of Emerson for a survey course; however, if you are looking for a total package text that reflects what Emerson is capable of as a writer and thinker, you are better off investing a little more money and picking up a Norton or Library of America Edition of his works.

This book has a collection of some of Emerson's best essays including "Self-Reliance" which is probably his most popular work. The underlying theme of all of them is essentially the same: "individuality." He advocated trusting and following one's own instincts and thoughts instead of blindly copying the customs and traditions of society. He encouraged people to search for the truth themselves rather than trying to find it in the works of other philosophers and poets. For example, in "Self-Reliance" he wrote, "In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."

His style can appear a little lofty at times, but he was gifted with the ability to articulate his thoughts extremely well and without equivocation. The fact that he is still widely read and quoted is a testament to the originality of his ideas and expression. I give this book five stars.