Emerson is one of the historical leaders who "adopted a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting ideas of God as apart from the universe." He is still considered one of the pillars of the American romantic movement, and his work has had a significant impact on the philosophers, authors, and poets who came after him.
Some other important facts about Ralph Waldo Emerson:
He was born on April 20th, 1775 in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were poor but educated; his father was an attorney who later became a judge.
As a boy, he showed an interest in poetry and philosophy which led to his being sent to live with relatives in Concord, Massachusetts at the age of 14. It there that he developed his passion for literature and philosophy further by reading many great thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, and Coleridge.
In 1803, he married Mary Moody Ellis, a rich young woman with two children from her previous marriage. The couple did not get along well together and eventually divorced in 1817. Mary died four years later at the age of 36. Ralph then married Ellen Tucker Webster, a young widow with three children. They had two more children together before divorcing in 1841. After this second divorce, Emerson moved in with his sister Elizabeth and her husband William Emerson. They had five more children together before Elizabeth died in 1849.
Drawing on English and German Romanticism, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–822) began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston but achieved worldwide fame as a lecturer and the author of such essays as "Self-Reliance," "History," "The Over-Soul," and "Fate."
His ideas had a huge influence on American Transcendentalism, which had its roots in the promotion by Emerson and other leaders of the Boston Society for Promoting Religious Freedom in 1780. These men and women sought to replace Christianity with a new type of spirituality that focused on individual conscience rather than on authority or tradition.
Emerson is considered the father of this movement, which included writers like Henry David Thoreau and William Ellery Channing. It can be seen in actions such as the establishment of community gardens in 1816 by Thoreau at his home in Concord, Massachusetts, and the creation by Channing of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston in 1852. This church allowed its members to receive religious rites of initiation and communion from priests who were not ordained by any Christian denomination.
Channing's idea of salvation through faith alone led him to reject the idea of eternal punishment and grant salvation to anyone who believed in a supreme being. This view was very controversial at the time and helped make Emerson and others like him famous worldwide.
Emerson was an eager academic who ultimately became a rebel. Thoreau was a nature lover who despised his fellow humans. They became gods to one other through the thick and thin of their thorny, passionate friendship. The Emerson-Thoreau legacy in The Connection's first hour.
The show begins in 1837 with the publication of Thoreau's essay "Resistance to Civil Government." This controversial piece calls for individuals to live according to their own conscience even if this means suffering punishment from society. Two years later, "Civil Disobedience" is published, arguing that individual moral action is essential for changing unjust laws. In 1840, at age 23, Thoreau travels to Europe, where he meets such people as Dickens, Goethe, and Marx. Back in America, Thoreau builds himself a cabin on Walden Pond and lives there for two months alone with his thoughts. In 1845, he publishes "Walden," a book that tells of his experience and argues that true freedom can only be found in isolation from others.
In 1847, at age 26, Thoreau joins a group of men to explore Massachusetts' Maine Woods. He returns home three months later with first-hand information about forest destruction caused by logging companies. That same year, he publishes A Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers, which becomes a popular success.
Emerson's article is transcendental in that it encourages humans to become one with God and the entire cosmos through communing with nature. He argues passionately for individuals to get firsthand experience from the world, as their forefathers did, rather than depending on the "dry bones of the past." This idea inspires people to go out into nature and explore its wonders themselves rather than relying on others to do it for them.
Here are some other interesting things you should know about this article:
Emerson was a famous American poet, essayist, and philosopher. He is considered the father of environmentalism because of his passionate support for conservation.
Emerson was born in Boston on April 25th, 1803. His parents were Ralph Waldo and Lois (Smith) Emerson. He had two sisters named Alice and Louisa. When Emerson was only nine years old, his father died of tuberculosis. Since there were no hospitals at that time, everyone in the family had to help take care of him. After his father's death, Emerson went to live with his uncle Thomas Emerson and his wife Elizabeth. They had three children of their own and they took care of young Emerson by giving him a private education. At age 16, Emerson became an apprentice at the Boston Post Office where he worked for five years. During this time, he learned how to write essays for publication.
Spirituality is a prominent subject in Emerson's essay. Emerson believed in reinventing the divine as something huge and visible, which he termed nature; this is known as transcendentalism, which occurs when a person experiences a new God and their body and becomes one with their environment. This is done through love and knowledge.
Emerson also believed that humanity had two natures, one good and one evil. It was up to individuals to choose which side they wanted to be on. If everyone chose good then it would win out over evil and create a perfect world. Otherwise we would still need gods or spirits to protect us from each other.
Emerson believed that reality was an illusion created by our senses. We think that things are certain ways because we experience them that way. For example, you might think that red cars are always fast because you have never seen any that were not. But if you were to see a green car you might find that it was as fast as any other car. Red means fast in Italian but not in French so it is possible that some red cars are not as fast as others.
There are also ideas in here about fate, free will, and determinism. Fate is when someone has no choice over what happens to them. They may like something or someone and therefore have no choice but to suffer because it is their destiny.
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