Puritanism Vs Transcendentalism

A philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, existence. There is a multitude of philosophies that one can believe in. Each philosophy teaches its followers a set of beliefs, morals, and traditions that determine the way its followers should live. Followers of every philosophy stick together in a society as one big family. They watch over each other just like family, and in any family there's always a “head of the family” who is looked upon. Throughout the major literary philosophies in the United States, one can see how a role model is looked up to throughout philosophy's history. Puritanism began in England in the early 1500’s. Christian people were taught to believe that the Universal-Guidelines-to-a-Holy-Life was written in scripture. However, Christian followers actually thought that the church was corrupt. A vast number of believers thought

Transcendentalists believed that there was no God. It was all about connecting to nature and figuring out what nature is telling you to do. The transcendentalists looked up to a man named Henry David Thoreau. This man went two years with nature, he went into the forest near a creek and made his home out of anything he could find. He believed it was a way of connecting with nature. Thoreau fought back to the government buy not paying his taxes and was thrown into jail for one night. He wasn’t just the transcendentalists role model he was also a role model in literature during this time period. During his one night stay in prison, Thoreau wrote Resistance to Civil Government. In his essay he wrote is thought about how the government was unfair and not right. “[I justice] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law”.(Thoreau 269) He tells his audience that if you are required to do something that isn’t right or doesn’t follow your morals you should fight