Social Reforms, Transcendentalism and Utopian Communities

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Social Reforms, Transcendentalism and Utopian
Communities
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Robert Owen A Declaration of Mental Independence
(July 4, 1826)

• Robert Owen was a British utopian thinker
• Widely regarded as the father of the Co-operative
  movement
• During the early industrial revolution,
  competitive free-enterprise capitalism prevailed
• Many workers were exploited
• Long hours and low pay
• Child labor
• Deplorable working conditions
• Owen purchased New Lanark Mills in Scotland
• Established model factory
• Paid fair wages
• Employed no child under age ten
• Free medical services
• Built affordable workers' housing
• Established schools
• Provided religious instruction and recreational
  facilities
• Many leading industrialists visited Owens
  factories and some even adopted parts of Owens
  system
• Owen moved to the US in 1824 and established
  collective farming at New Harmony, Indiana
• The farm covered over 20,000 acres
• Owen called for a revolution in Western thought

Robert Owen
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Robert Owens Vision of New Harmony
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William Maclure Letter to the New Harmony
Gazette (May 17, 1826)

• Disputes arose concerning the structure of the
  community and about religion
• These factors led to an abandonment of the
  communal principle after two years
• Josiah Warren, a participant at the New Harmony
  Society, declared that the community was doomed
  to failure due to a lack of individual
  sovereignty and private property
• "We had a world in miniature. --we had enacted
  the French revolution over again with despairing
  hearts instead of corpses as a result. ...It
  appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of
  diversity that had conquered us... our "united
  interests" were directly at war with the
  individualities of persons and circumstances and
  the instinct of self-preservation..."
• In a letter to the people of New Harmony, William
  Maclure, a leader in the community, discussed the
  problem of some doing more work than others, and
  the inability for some to feel themselves equal
  to those of a different class
• As a solution to these problems, the community
  was divided into sub-communities
• This division of the community foreshadowed the
  eventual failure of Owen's New Harmony project
• By 1828, Owen's ambitious experiment at New
  Harmony consumed almost four-fifths of his
  personal wealth and eventually it was abandoned
• Owen returned to England in 1829
• He persisted in his efforts to better the lives
  of the working poor
• Left a lasting influence on the development of
  socialist thought

William Maclure
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Bronson Alcott's Maxims on Education (1826-1827)

• Amos Bronson Alcott teacher and writer
• Associated with the Transcendentalist movement
• Attempted to embody his ideals
• In his schools he introduced art, music, nature
  study, field trips, and physical education into
  the curriculum, while banishing corporal
  punishment
• He encouraged children to ask questions and
  taught through dialogue and example
• Founded a Utopian community, Fruitlands, in
  Harvard, Massachusetts, which only lasted a short
  time
• Alcott's Journals display his wit and his
  unyielding optimism
• In 1826-1827, Alcott wrote General Maxims for
  teachers
• His maxims represent cautions and advice to
  teachers as to their role in and influence upon
  young minds in the classroom
• They display Alcott's love for and devotion to
  children, and his belief in the ability of
  children to think for themselves
• 15. To teach, appreciating the value of the
  beings to whom instruction is given
• 21. To teach, gradually and understandingly, by
  the shortest steps, from the more easy and known,
  to the more difficult and unknown
• 26. To teach, by simple and plain unambiguous
  language
• 37. To teach, endeavouring to make pupils feel
  their importance by the hope which mankind placed
  in their conduct
• 52. To teach, pupils to teach themsleves
• Alcott's most lasting contributions were in
  education
• Attempted many practices which today would be
  considered commonplace, but in his time were seen
  as dangerous

Amos Bronson Alcott
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Orestes Augustus Brownson New Views of
Christianity, Society, and the Church (1836)

• Orestes Augustus Brownson philosopher, minister,
  essayist, and reviewer
• Became a prolific writer and commentator on
  social and religious questions
• By age thirty, Brownson became a Universalist
  preacher and editor of the theological journal,
  Gospel Advocate
• He published The Boston Quarterly and wrote his
  articles alongside such Transcendentalists as
  Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and George
  Ripley
• His articles were of a literary, philosophical
  and political nature
• His articles also appeared in the
  Transcendentalist magazine, The Dial.
• With other Transcendentalists he participated in
  the Brook Farm experiment
• Unlike the Transcendentalists he thought that men
  were sinful
• In 1836 he organized the Society for Christian
  Union and Progress and published New Views of
  Christianity, Society, and the Church.
• Brownson took exception to many tenets of the
  Christian faith, writing in 1840, that
  Christianity ought to be abolished
• But, by 1844, Brownson reconsidered his brief
  aversion to Christianity
• Brownson became conservative and adopted
  Catholicism
• He then began criticizing socialism and
  utopianism
• Many Transcendentalists were taken back by his
  conversion and began describing him as an
  "unbalanced mind
• Brownson did not think that the major problems of
  the American experiment had to do with lack of
  liberty but with its abuse
• He was concerned with virtue above all
• Brownson wrote in 1864, "If you would make a man
  happy, study not to augment his goods but to
  diminish his wants

Orestes Augustus Brownson
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Ralph Waldo Emerson Man the Reformer (January
25, 1841)

• Ralph Waldo Emerson was at the center of the
  American transcendental movement
• The major American philosopher of the nineteenth
  century
• In September 1835, Emerson founded the
  Transcendental Club with notables like Nathaniel
  Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Hoar
  and Margaret Fuller
• In 1840, Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and George
  Ripley founded the magazine, The Dial, with
  Margaret Fuller editing
• The Dial became the leading mouthpiece for the
  transcendental movement
• Emerson, its editor for two years, began
  publishing his poems and essays in the magazine
• By the 1840s, Emerson became recognized as the
  leader of the Transcendental movement
• In addition to his writings, Emerson made a
  living as a popular lecturer in New England
• Audiences were captivated by his speaking style
• Emphasized self-reliance and nonconformity, he
  championed authentic American literature, and
  insisted that each individual find their own
  relation to God
• . . . man as a reformer. . . our life . . . is
  common and mean . . . yet . . . each person . . .
  has felt his own call to cast aside all evil
  customs . . . and to be in his place a free and
  helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not
  content to slip along through the world like a
  footman or a spy . . . but a brave and upright
  man, who must find or cut a straight road to
  everything excellent in the earth, and not only
  go honorably himself, but make it easier for all
  who follow him, to go in honor and with benefit

Emerson Lecturing
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Ralph Waldo Emerson The Transcendentalist
(January 1842)

• Emerson developed a distinctly American strand of
  philosophy that emphasized optimism,
  individuality, and mysticism
• Although he never read Immanuel Kant, the great
  German Transcendental philosopher, his work is
  reflective German idealism
• Emersons Transcendentalism also resembled
  British Romanticism in his belief that a
  fundamental continuity exists between man,
  nature, and God, or the divine
• In religious matters, Emerson rejected the belief
  in a personal God and developed non-traditional
  ideas of soul and God
• He asserted in the essential unity of all
  thoughts, persons, and things in the divine whole
• For Emerson, traditional values of right and
  wrong, good and evil, appear in his work as
  necessary opposites
• He asserted that, in the individual, all truth
  can be discovered
• He emphasized individualism and each person's
  quest to break free from the trappings of the
  world of the senses in order to discover the
  godliness of the inner Self
• He also stressed self-reliance and independence
  and his emphasis on non-conformity profoundly
  effected Henry David Thoreau
• Nature was also essential to Transcendentalism
• According to Emerson, what is beyond nature is
  revealed through nature nature is itself a
  symbol, or an indication of a deeper reality
• The Transcendentalist adopts the whole
  connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in
  miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human
  mind to new influx of light and power he
  believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy . . . the
  spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of
  the thought . . . so he resists all attempts to
  palm other rules and measures on the spirit than
  its own

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Immanuel Kant
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Margaret Fuller The Great Lawsuit Man vs. Men.
Woman vs. Women (July 1843)

• Margaret Fuller holds a distinctive place in the
  cultural life of the American Renaissance
• She was a transcendentalist, literary critic,
  editor, journalist, teacher, and political
  activist, ultimately turned revolutionary
• Fuller became increasingly linked to the
  Transcendentalist movement and befriended most of
  the leading intellectuals of Boston and Concord,
  most notably Emerson
• From 1840 to 1842, she served with Emerson as
  editor of The Dial
• Published in 1843, Fullers essay "The Great
  Lawsuit. Man versus Men, Woman versus Women" made
  a compelling case for women's equality
• . . . If the negro be a soul, if the woman be a
  soul, apparelled in flesh, to one master only are
  they accountable. There is but one law for all
  souls, and, if there is to be an interpreter of
  it, he comes not as man, or son of man, but as
  Son of God
• In 1844, Fuller became a book review editor for
  the New York Tribune
• In 1845 she expanded her Dial essay and published
  Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which became a
  classic of feminist thought
• In 1846, Fuller became a foreign correspondent
  for the Tribune and traveled to Europe
• There, she met many well-known European writers
  and intellectuals
• In Italy, she became involved with
  revolutionaries and decided not to return to
  America for a while
• She fell in love with Marchese Giovanni Angelo
  d'Ossoli, a much younger man of the petty
  nobility and a fellow revolutionary
• She participated in the Revolution of 1848
• After the revolt was suppressed by conservative
  forces, she, Ossoli and their son decided to
  return to America in May of 1850
• Tragically, the ship they were traveling on
  struck a sandbar and slowly sank just off Fire
  Island New York
• Fuller, Ossoli, and their son drowned

Margaret Fuller
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Ralph Waldo Emersons The Tragic (1844)

• In this essay Emerson outlines the tragic
  elements of human life
• According to Emerson, people should accept the
  fact that life contains pain, disappointment and
  frustration
• Yet it is possible to obtain happiness despite
  lifes tragic moments
• For Emerson, the development of personal
  conscience yields perspective and ultimately
  personal contentment
• He has seen but half the universe who never has
  been shown the House of Pain. As the salt sea
  covers more than two thirds of the surface of the
  globe, so sorrow encroaches in man on felicity .
  . . the prevalent hue of things to the eye of
  leisure is melancholy. . . Melancholy cleaves to
  the English mind in both hemispheres . . . no
  theory of life can have any right, which leaves
  out of account the values of vice, pain, disease,
  poverty, insecurity, disunion, fear, and death.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
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John Humphrey Noyes Bible Communism (February
1849)

• At Yale, Noyes discovered the idea of
  Perfectionism
• The idea was that it was possible to be free
  oneself of sin and achieve spiritual perfection
• In 1834, he declared himself Perfect and free
  from sin which outraged others and his license to
  preach was revoked
• He believed that the Second Coming was near and
  the Kingdom of Heaven could be created on earth
• He continued to preach in Putney, Vermont and
  organized a community of followers
• Noyes further studied the ideas of complex
  marriage, male continence and striving for
  Perfection
• In 1847, Noyes was arrested for adultery
• After several supporters were also arrested,
  Noyes left Vermont for Oneida, New York
• The Oneida Community would survive until 1879 and
  grow to a membership of over 300
• In order to support itself, the Community had
  many successful industries
• They manufactured animal traps and silk thread,
  and raised and canned fruits and vegetables.
• The Oneida Perfectionists believed in a special
  covenant with God, that the individual was to be
  sublimated to the community as a whole, and that
  an authoritarian figure should govern the
  communitys interests
• In his essay Bible Communism, Noyes outlined
  the most important aspects of his religious
  philosophy
• All members were equal and the economy of the
  community must be communist
• The most famous rule was based on Christ's
  teaching that there would be no marriage in
  Heaven
• Therefore, Noyes asserted that on earth all men
  were married to all women, and that the men and
  women in the community should be sexually
  intimate with a variety of partners
• In June 1879, Noyes faced arrest for statutory
  rape and fled to Canada

John Humphrey Noyes
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The Oneida Community (1878)
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The Brook Farm Experiment (1841-1847)

• The Brook Farm was located on a 200-acre dairy
  farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts, 9 miles outside
  of Boston
• Founded as a transcendentalist Utopian experiment
  by George Ripley
• It was conceived as an agrarian and pastoral
  utopia and was organized along the ideas of
  Charles Fourier, a French socialist thinker who
  argued that a utopian society could be created in
  which people would jointly share in the
  development of the whole community
• Accordingly, the project was financed by a
  joint-stock company with 24 shares of stock at
  500 per share and each member was to participate
  in the manual labor in an attempt to make the
  group self-sufficient
• The economy of the farm was based primarily on
  agriculture
• The Brook Farm experienced a intellectually
  stimulating atmosphere in which such luminaries
  as Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. Dwight, Charles
  A. Dana, and Isaac Hecker resided and giants as
  Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. E. Channing, Margaret
  Fuller, Horace Greeley, and Orestes Brownson
  visited frequently
• Despite enthusiasm for the project, however, the
  Brook Farm imploded due to financial stress after
  only six years of operation

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Ralph Waldo Emersons Criticism of Socialism from
his Lectures Historic Notes of Life and Letters
in New England

• At the beginning of the 19th century, American
  intellectuals came under the sway of European
  socialist thinkers
• In particular the ideas of the French utopian
  socialist thinker, Charles Fourier who advocated
  the extension of womens rights and the adoption
  of workers cooperatives
• Also, the British industrialist Robert Owen
• Both were considered by many Americans to offer a
  better method for organizing society
• However, Emerson took exception to what he
  considered the rigidity of socialist thought
• Although he admired both Fourier and Owen for the
  novelty of their thought, he nevertheless
  considered socialism impractical
• Above all, he saw the greatest danger of
  socialism in its inherent stifling of
  individuality

Charles Fourier
Robert Owen
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Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience (1849)

• Henry David Thoreau was one of the best known
  transcendentalist thinkers of his age
• Perceiving little difference between his writing
  and his life, Thoreau was also an extremely
  complex literary figure of many talents who
  turned to nature in a life-long quest for
  ultimate Truth
• He met Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became a patron
  and advisor to him and who introduced him to the
  leading transcendental thinkers of the day
• Through Emerson, Thoreau contributed essays and
  poems to The Dial
• Although he could never make a living from his
  writings, Thoreaus work now comprises over 20
  volumes
• His writing is rich and complex and intended to
  nudge readers to reconsider the beliefs that make
  up their lives
• Politically, Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist
• He opposed the U.S governments war against
  Mexico, which he believed was merely a ruse to
  extend slavery
• In 1846, Thoreau was imprisoned after he refused
  to pay taxes in protest against the Mexican War
• Consequently, he wrote Civil Disobedience where
  he justified nonviolent resistance to the
  government out of moral principles
• For him, morality was more important than
  societys laws at any given time and political
  institutions should be considered with skepticism

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Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

• From 1845-1847, Thoreau embarked on a two-year
  experiment in simple living by living in an
  isolated log cabin on land owned by Emerson
• His intent was to isolate himself from society in
  order to reexamine its values and practices and
  his role within it
• While at Walden, Thoreau did an incredible amount
  of reading and writing, yet he also spent much
  time "sauntering" in nature
• Thoreau lived a life of simplicity at Walden
• He supported himself through his own labors, and
  widely read the classics of world literature
• In 1854, Thoreau published an account of this
  period entitled Walden, which became one of the
  great classics of American literature indeed of
  world literature
• It offers a social critique of the West with its
  emphasis on consumerism and its widespread
  destruction of the natural environment
• The book invites one to the examine ones life
  and to the realization of one's potential

Henry David Thoreau
A Modern Replica of Thoreaus Walden Cabin
Walden Pond
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