I would have to disagree with you, Luke. Though maybe by definition, the word “transcend” means “to go beyond” the idea of transcendentalism wasn’t to go beyond, but to correct and live correctly. As the document that Mr.Ripper provided us with states, “Transcendentalism was a movement for religious renewal, literary innovation, and social transformation.” Some were moving forward innovations, but most of this movement was a kind of refresh, or as said in the text, transformation, and renewal.
According to the readings “Transcendentalism emerged from Unitarianism, or 'liberal Christianity'—an anti-Calvinist, anti-Trinitarian, anti-Creedal offshoot of Puritanism that had taken hold among the middle and upper classes of eastern Massachusetts.” These groups took Unitarianism and focused on concern for self-culture, a sense of moral seriousness, a neo-Platonic concept of piety, a tendency toward individualism, a belief in the importance of literature, and an interest in moral reform. These transcendentalists believed laws should be disobeyed if moral intuition held them to be unjust. This was also argued by Thoreau who “advised individuals to disobey unjust laws to prevent their involvement in evil.” Again as our text states in a broader sense, “the transcendentalists held that inspiration was blunted by social conformity, which therefore must be resisted.”
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In Dominique's question, he asks how transcendentalism shaped the core morals and values of people in America. Well, to answer that we should question the era he is referring to. If compared to our times we can see the huge impact that this movement has had. The biggest in my opinion is the one you have already mentioned, slavery. In fact when most think about, “what got rid of slavery?”, most would refer to Martin Luther King Jr. as he was the biggest public figure in equal rights for people of color, however, transcendentalism was the actual beginning of it all. If there was nobody like transcendentalists, there would be no traction for the cause of abolishing slavery to go off of. The reasoning behind this resistance to slavery was because it was seen, as you have also quoted, “as inherently wrong because it crushed the spiritual development of slaves.”
Another very important movement of today that shares its roots with this movement is the modern environmental movement. Transcendentalists believed in laying “great value on the spiritual value of nature; Thoreau, particularly, is regarded as a principal forerunner of the modern environmental movement.” Thoreau was a very strong transcendentalist who took part in the dismantling of existing institutions in an attempt to “discover an economy that would provide full human satisfaction.” He was quoted describing himself as 'a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher.' To Thoreau and most of those who were part of the transcendentalism movement saw nature as a representation of 'absolute freedom and wildness,' whereas society provided freedom and culture merely civil.'
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