Thomas Paine And Transcendentalism Essay

Thomas Paine a widely known author during the 18th century America, known for his persuasive rhetorician for the cause of independence. Paine was born in England and he did not come to America until he was thirty-seven years old when right when the rebellion was coming into view. During this time Paine was a supporter for this Revolution. Paine received many political appointments as reward for his duty as a writer for the American cause. Throughout his writings, Paine 's main goal was to define his own belief for American Liberty but many people viewed that as an attack on Christianity. Thomas Paine had many popular writings throughout this time but to name one that concentrated on the ideals of liberty was “The Crisis, No. 1”. In the writing

The philosophical and literary movement of Transcendentalism is the idea to trust your inner intuition as well as becoming one with nature. During this time period as well, the idea of Transcendentalism was to have an intense communion with nature. This extreme with relationship is also seen as a branch of romanticism. There were many writers who believed and taught this idea, the two main authors in my opinion were Ralph Waldo Emerson with his work, From Nature, “Introduction” and “Chapter I, Nature” and Henry Thoreau with the writing of his work “Civil Disobedience”. To begin, Emerson’s idea throughout these works is that nature itself does not have a personality of it’s own. For example, when one says nature is mad when having a thunderstorm, we are the ones who are associating that emotion or personality with nature, not God himself. Emerson believes that if one should have questions about the universe that they will be answered upon one 's own experiences and with the world around us. The way that he defines nature is as having everything separated from the inner individual, art, other people, and our own bodies. Even though throughout his essay Emerson defines nature as all of things, the individual, art, and other people. Emerson himself, understood nature as self transcends. He wanted the reader to get the idea of being completed surrounded in nature. Emerson believed in having solitude and to achieve that one must follow his advice, “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society (Emerson 215). For example, he believed that in order to have true solitude one needed to go out into nature, leaving all the worries and stresses of life behind. Emerson was completely involved with the idea of nature and the state of mind of the person who is coming together with nature. He believed that one could even have the capacity of losing himself into nature and truly becoming one with the natural