Name: - Insiyafatema Alvani
Roll No: - 11
Semester: - 2 (Batch 2022-24)
Enrolment number: - 4069206420220001
Paper No: - 108
Paper name: - The American Literature
Paper code: - 22401
Topic: - Influence of Indian Philosophy on Transcendentalism
Submitted to: - Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Email Address: insiyafatemaalvani@gmail.com
Influence of Indian Philosophy on Transcendentalism
What is Transcendentalism ?
Transcendentalism is an American literary, philosophical, religious, and political movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson and was heavily influenced by German philosophers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Immanuel Kant, along with English writers like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Transcendentalists espoused four main philosophical points. Simply stated, these were the ideas of:
- Self Reliance
- Individual Conscience
- Intuition Over Reason
- Unity of All Things in Nature
In other words, individual men and women can be their own authority on knowledge through the use of their own intuition and conscience. The Transcendentalist Movement was centered in New England and included a number of prominent individuals including Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. They formed a club called The Transcendental Club, which met to discuss a number of new ideas. In addition, they published a periodical that they called "The Dial" along with their individual writings.
The Origin of Transcendentalism:
Transcendentalism has its origins in New England of the early 1800s and the birth of Unitarianism. It was born from a debate between “New Light” theologians, who believed that religion should focus on an emotional experience, and “Old Light” opponents, who valued reason in their religious approach.
These “Old Lights” became known first as “liberal Christians” and then as Unitarians, and were defined by the belief that there was no trinity of father, son and holy ghost as in traditional Christian belief, and that Jesus Christ was a mortal. Thinkers in the movement embraced ideas brought forth by philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ancient Indian scripture known as the Vedas and religious founder Emanuel Swedenborg.
Transcendentalists advocated the idea of a personal knowledge of God, believing that no intermediary was needed for spiritual insight. They embraced idealism, focusing on nature and opposing materialism. By the 1830s, literature began to appear that bound the Transcendentalist ideas together in a cohesive way and marked the beginnings of a more organized movement.
Major Transcendentalist Values:
The transcendentalism movement arose as a result of a reaction to Unitarianism as well as the Age of Reason. Both centered on reason as the main source of knowledge, but transcendentalists rejected that notion. Some of the transcendentalist beliefs are:
- Humans are inherently good
- Society and its institutions such as organized religion and politics are corrupting. Instead of being part of them, humans should strive to be independent and self-reliant
- Spirituality should come from the self, not organized religion
- Insight and experience are more important than logic
- Nature is beautiful, should be deeply appreciated, and shouldn’t be altered by humans
The transcendentalist movement encompassed many beliefs, but these all fit into their three main values of individualism, idealism, and the divinity of nature.
Individualism:
Perhaps the most important transcendentalist value was the importance of the individual. They saw the individual as pure, and they believed that society and its institutions corrupted this purity. Transcendentalists highly valued the concept of thinking for oneself and believed people were best when they were independent and could think for themselves. Only then could individuals come together and form ideal communities.
Idealism:
The focus on idealism comes from Romanticism, a slightly earlier movement. Instead of valuing logic and learned knowledge as many educated people at the time did, transcendentalists placed great importance on imagination, intuition and creativity. They saw the values of the Age of Reason as controlling and confining, and they wanted to bring back a more “ideal” and enjoyable way of living.
Divinity of Nature:
Transcendentalists didn’t believe in organized religion, but they were very spiritual. Instead of believing in the divinity of religious figures, they saw nature as sacred and divine. They believed it was crucial for humans to have a close relationship with nature, the same way religious leaders preach about the importance of having a close relationship with God. Transcendentalists saw nature as perfect as it was; humans shouldn’t try to change or improve.
Key Figures in Transcendentalist Movement:
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Emerson is the key figure in transcendentalism. He brought together many of the original transcendentalists and his writing from the foundation of many of the movement's beliefs. The day before he published his essay "Nature" he invited a group of his friends to join the "Transcendentalist Club" a meeting of like-minded individuals to discuss their beliefs. He continued to host club meetings, write essays, and give speeches to promote transcendentalism. Some of his most important transcendentalist essays include “The Over-Soul,” “Self-Reliance,” “The American Scholar", "Divinity School Address".
Henry David Thoreau:
The second-most important transcendentalist, Thoreau was a friend of Emerson’s who is best known for his book Walden. Walden is focused on the benefits of individualism, simple living and close contact with and observation of nature. Thoreau also frequently opposed the government and its actions, most notably in his essay "Civil Disobedience ".
Margaret Fuller:
Margaret Fuller was perhaps the leading female transcendentalist. A well-known journalist and ardent supporter of women’s rights, she helped cofound The Dial, the key transcendentalist journal, with Emerson, which helped cement her place in the movement and spread the ideas of transcendentalism to a wider audience. An essay she wrote for the journal was later published as the book "Woman in the Nineteenth Century", one of the earliest feminist works in the United States. She believed in the importance of the individual, but often felt that other transcendentalists, namely Emerson, focused too much on individualism at the expense of social reform.
Frederic Henry Hedge:
Frederic Henry Hedge met Emerson when both were students at Harvard Divinity School. Hedge was studying to become a Unitarian minister, and he had already spent several years studying music and literature in Germany. Emerson invited him to join the first meeting of the Transcendental Club (originally called Hedge’s Club, after him), and he attended meetings for several years. He wrote some of the earliest pieces later categorized as Transcendentalist works, but he later became somewhat alienated from the group and refused to write pieces for The Dial.
Transcendentalism and Romanticism:
Transcendentalism is also related with English moment Romanticism. It began throughout the expanse of Europe as Romanticism in the early Eighteenth century, traveled across the Atlantic with Emerson, and combined with his study of Indian philosophy, Neoplatonism and Kantianism, appeared in the form of Transcendentalism in America. Despite being a consequence of all these factors, it was largely the global success of Romanticism that both influenced American authors and primed European and American readers and critics for American transcendentalist literature. Another central point within the movement is associated with the attitude towards nature. The idea of such power pervades Emerson’s Nature, where he writes of nature as “obedient” to spirit and counsels each of us to “Build.. your own world.” Wordsworth has his more receptive mode as well, in which he calls for “a heart that watches and receives'' in 'The Tables Turned', and we find Emerson’s receptive mode from Nature onward, as when he recounts an ecstatic experience in the woods: “I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing; I see all; The currents of the universal being circulate through me.”
In the literary field, with the arrival of writers like Emerson, Hawthorne, Fuller and Thoreau, New England underwent a religious reformation and intellectual awakening that paralleled Elizabethan England. It is for this reason that the period, inspired by the romantic impulse, is often termed as the American Renaissance. This term however is only applicable for the quantitative parallel and not contextual one. Contextually, the period is identified as American Romanticism. Like its English counterpart, Transcendentalism liberated the restrictions imposed by earlier literary philosophies. Naturally, a similar consequence of this new philosophy was seen in the new American writings as well. Moving away from the conservative and religious approach in writing, that was particularly seen in the figure of Jonathan Edwards, nearly all subsequent writers of the Nineteenth century New Englanders adopted the liberal religious views. Reuben Post Halleck in his work History of American Literature Quotes, “The mission of all the great New England writers of this age was to make individuals freer, more cultivated, more self-reliant, more kindly, more spiritual”.
Influence of Indian Philosophy on Transcendentalism:
India and its philosophical ideas have been an active contributor in the world’s quest for meaning and truth. The wide variety of Indian literature, namely the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Darsanas, the Dharmashastras, the Puranas, the epics, and the literary classics, encapsulate all of human life and its experience which further the cause of the said quest. Western scholars have, therefore, always been preoccupied in dissecting the knowledge that form a part of the aforementioned texts. Apart from Indian thinkers like Raja Rammohan Roy, Swami Vivekanada and Sri Aurobindo, a host of scholars from the West have made efforts in the said direction. English scholars had always been interested in dissecting the spiritual knowledge that India possessed. Therefore, right after the British acquisition of India, a number of writers began studying and publishing works that were either inspired from Indian philosophy or were their direct translations. Amongst these scholars, Charles Wilkins and H. T. Colebrooke published several works. Wilkins is known for his English translation of Hitopadesa of Veeshnoosarma and Bhagavadgita, the latter being the first ever English translation of the revered text. Thoreau imbibed this practice from Emerson, who was an avid reader of Vedantic writings. Horton identifies that “Emerson’s favorite of all Vedantic writings was the Bhagvadgita which he read and loaned to his friends until it was worn out”. Even Swami Vivekananda observes the same in a lecture given at the Shakespeare Club in California of February 1, 1900: “If you want to know the source of Emerson’s inspiration, it is in this book, The Gita. He went to see Carlyle, and Carlyle gave him a present of the Gita; and that little book is responsible for the Concord Movement” (Vivekananda).
Between July 1842 and January 1843, Emerson, along with Thoreau, also published extracts from Manusmriti And Hitopadesha In their Transcendental organ, The Dial. Thoreau’s acquaintance with Indian philosophy began during his Harvard years, where along with the study of Greek classics he also began reading “scriptures from the East”. This happened even before he met Emerson. Upon meeting and living with Emerson, Thoreau’s ideas and views were re-confirmed and realigned in the very direction. In his later Journals, Thoreau reports that he was reading the works of Wilson on January 24, 1856 and the Upanishads on September 30, 1857.
Emerson and Indian Thoughts:
Transcendentalism was the first American intellectual movement that showed true interests in Eastern philosophy. Emerson started to read about Indian philosophy and mythology in The Edinburgh Review between 1820 and 1825. His interest in Indian thought grew when he was a young Harvard graduate, and it continued until the end of his writing career. We see its evidence in many of his essays, poems, letters, and journal entries. For example, the concept of Brahma plays a central role in his works and ideas. He is also very much interested in the Bhagavad Gita. Some of his essays such as “Self-Reliance” deal with a theme that is very much similar to the concept of karma.
The Bhagavad Gita:
Emerson was particularly struck by the teachings of Bhagavad Gita, “the first of books,” as he once called it. He wrote about the Gita that “In England the Understanding rules & materialistic truth, the becoming, the fit, the discreet, the brave, the advantageous But they could not produce such a book as the Bhagavat Geeta”. The Gita is an ancient Sanskrit text composed of verses embellished with many literary devices such as allegory, metaphor, and allusion. It is a record of conversations between Bhagavan or God, in the form of Krishna, and Arjuna, a human. Arjuna is a kshatriya warrior of the Pandava family and Krishna is his cousin and the driver of his chariot. In the battle field, Arjuna sees many of his relatives in the opposing force and, being overcome by pity, he refuses to fight. Krishna then tries to make him realize the importance of fighting. He also reminds him of his obligation to follow his dharma or duty and to ignore his personal feelings. Krishna sends this message to mankind through Arjuna, as does Christ through his twelve disciples. Krishna says: “Though unborn, for the Atman [soul] is eternal, though Lord of all beings, yet using my own nature, I come into existence using my own maya.”
Krishna sends himself through human beings to save people from adharma, ruin of morality and justice. He says, “For whenever there is a decaying of dharma, and a rising up of adharma, then I send Myself forth”. This idea resonates with Emerson’s emphasis on intuition and conscience. In the essay “Over-Soul,” he writes that we, as individual souls, are part of the Greater or Over-Soul. We do not have to go to church to be united with the Over-Soul because our intuition can illuminate our spiritual world like the flashes of light. In a letter to William Emerson, written on May 24, 1831, Emerson wrote,
“I have been reading 7 or 8 lectures of Cousin—in the first of three volumes of his philosophy. A master of history, an epic he makes of man & of the world—& excels all men in giving effect, yea, éclat to a metaphysical theory. Have you not read it? tis good reading—well worth the time—clients or no clients.”. Ralph L. Rusk, the editor of Letters, comments that “this reading of Victor Cousin’s first volume, Cours de philosophie, 1828, was particularly significant because it was this book which gave Emerson his first taste for the Bhagavad Gita". Thus, Emerson’s letters along with his essays and journals indicate that the Bhagavad Gita was a great source of knowledge and inspiration for him.
The Law of Karma:
In Sanskrit, karma means action or work. In the Upanishads and Vedic traditions, karma signifies “the results or consequences of action” and, more distinctively, “the unwanted, to-be-avoided-at-all-costs results or fruits of action.” The results of disobedience bring future suffering and pain. The Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita all mention that disobeyers must face grave consequences. Thus, the law of karma is a device to link up actions and their consequences of this life and of the next. The Svetasvatara Upanisad states two important doctrines about karma: (1) “According to its actions, the embodied self chooses repeatedly various forms in various conditions in the next life,” and (2) “according to its own qualities and acts, the embodied self chooses the kinds of forms, large and small, that it will take on”. Therefore, it is the self that chooses the form it wants to be. What is remarkable here is to note that every self gets what it wants and what it deserves. Moreover, the law of karma works automatically because there is no god, according to the above mentioned laws, who can give each self rewards or punishments.
Franklin Edgerton comments on this automatic karmic law: “It is man’s relation to propriety or morality, dharma, which alone determines. For more than two thousand years, it appears that almost all Hindus have regarded transmigration, determined by “karma,” as an axiomatic fact. ‘By good deed one becomes what is good; by evil deed, evil'. In this sense, it seems to be clear that the karmic laws work according to the deeds or actions of individuals, not by the choice of any gods. In line with this conception of the karmic laws, Emerson emphasizes the good deeds of people. In “Self-Reliance,” he urges his readers not to depend on good luck. He concludes that: A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles
Here, Emerson’s notion of self-reliance is very close to the karmic laws. We can choose whatever we want to be; everything is determined by our actions or karma. We have freedom of choice and we can achieve the godly qualities that we already have within ourselves; or, we can choose to be devilish by our own karma. Nevertheless, Emerson is sometimes disturbed because he sees two sides of things—oftentimes two opposing sides. In “The Conduct of Life,” he presents a virtue of necessity, and believes that it is the art of living to suspend the oppositions and contradictions in mind. Although he recognizes the potent force of Fate, he wants his readers to believe in freewill. If both Fate and freewill are real, we have to conquer both. But, Emerson asks rhetorically: “How shall a man escape from his ancestors?” Nature is responsible for this notion of heredity because Nature, Emerson believes, brings us both disasters and delights. So, how can we accept the delights that Nature brings and avoid the disasters? There is no short answer to this question, as Emerson argues in “Compensation” that “To empty here, you must condense there.” However, one answer to this problem seems to be clear when Emerson, in “The Conduct of Life,” says that “If we must accept Fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty.” Thus, Emerson’s concept of liberty or freewill goes hand in hand with the idea of karma because according to both concepts, we can re/construct our fate by our actions. However, he is sometimes troubled because he can see not only two sides of things, but also an inherent contradiction in the concepts of good and evil. In “Compensation,” he seems to accept the existence of evil when he assures his readers that God has created everything for the best. Nonetheless, Emerson continues to be perplexed by the riddle of two-sidedness of things. In one of his bleak statements, he writes that “There is a crack in everything God has made”. He uses the term “polarity” to describe this unevenness in nature.
Conclusion:
Thus, the Indian philosophical and religious concepts and teachings had a great influence on Emerson’s intellectual works. Throughout his journals, he praises this book and claims that Europe was not able to produce a book like Gita. The laws of karma emphasize the actions of individuals and freedom of choice. In “The Conduct of Life” and “Self-Reliance,” Emerson exploits the concept of karma, and urges his readers to be responsible for their own deeds.
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References -
Anwar Ahmed. “(PDF) Emerson′s Passion for Indian Thought - Researchgate.” ResearchGate , Jan. 2013, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270369804_Emerson's_Passion_for_Indian_Thought.
Joshi, Shubham. “A Study of the Influence of English Romanticism and Indian Philosophy on Henry David Thoreau and His Work Walden.” Contemporary Literary Review India, Feb. 2022, https://www.literaryjournal.in/index.php/clri/article/view/1041.
Sarikas, Christine. “What Is Transcendentalism? Understanding the Movement.” What Is Transcendentalism? Understanding the Movement, 23 July 2019, https://blog.prepscholar.com/transcendentalism-definition-movement.
