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Multiculturalism and Transcendentalism

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Multiculturalism and Transcendentalism Acad. Quest. (2019) 32:515–520 DOI 10.1007/s12129-019-09835-z DISTINCTIONS Multiculturalism and Transcendentalism Arthur Versluis Published online: 8 November 2019 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 American Transcendentalism, a signature American movement of the nineteenth century, might superficially seem to be an early form of late-twentieth and twenty-first-century multiculturalism. As I demonstrated in American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (1993), the main figures in the movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, were among the first to draw on a newly global perspective on world religions. Emerson’s and Thoreau’s works are peppered with references to Hinduism, as well as Islam, Christianity, and Christian and Islamic mysticism. One could argue that the Transcendentalists were the first multiculturalists. But in the contemporary university curriculum, the Transcendentalists are, like Platonists, seldom found. That’s because the Transcendentalists were not today’s multiculturalists. They were introducing instead a multitude of complex and salient religious philosophies they believed could be adapted to American life. In this sense, Emerson, Thoreau, and the others in their circle, as well as of those in what I term the “second cycle of Transcendentalism,” were the true multiculturalists, insisting that the sublime insights of the world’s great religions were available to all, that no man was locked inside a philosophical prison by a set of predetermined traits. For the Transcendentalists, the Vedas or other religious texts represented cultural knowledge that can be applied to one’s own life, “appropriated” for the purposes of human enrichment and civilizational advance. Arthur Versluis is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University; [email protected]. His latest book is Platonic Mysticism: Contemplative Science, Philosophy, Literature, and Art (SUNY Press, 2017). 516 A. Versluis This focus on becoming better people, on becoming more cultured, on living life more deeply, impels the entire movement. It is the primary subject of Thoreau’s famous Walden; it is certainly the leitmotif of Alcott’s works and life journey, including his utopian effort at Fruitlands; and it is woven throughout Emerson’s avuncular essays on subjects such as The Conduct of Life (1860) or Society and Solitude (1870). Theirs are complex and subtle literary works with a vast set of literary, philosophical, artistic, and religious references. While each author has a distinctive personality, they are historically grouped together because of their friendships and their common characteristics. All drew on the world’s religious traditions in order to develop their own lives and consciousness, to become better and wiser individuals and, through writing and public speaking, to share what they have learned. Here we come upon an aspect of the Transcendentalists’ works and thought that does not fit very well with contemporary perspectives on our collective intellectual inheritance. The Transcendentalists saw great authors of their past and present as contemporaries. The dialogues of Plato were conveyed from antiquity to the time of the Transcendentalists because Plato’sworkhad something immediate to offer. We can participate in the dialogues by reading them; Plato and his characters are present with us through them. So too with the epic poetry of Homer or Virgil: a work is one whose greatness lies in our engagement with it, in the ways that it opens new vistas for us, or as Thoreau suggested in Walden, a work through which we participate in the great morning of our own life and in the dawn of humanity at the same time. This does not mean we are slaves to or pedants of such works; it means rather that we become freer through them. Great works are those that ennoble us. For the American Transcendentalists, a global perspective was now possible. By the middle of the nineteenth century, and certainly in its second half, great works of the Asian religious traditions had become available for the first time in translation. The Sufi poets were becoming known in the West. The Christian mystics were available, and, through the work of the indefatigable translator Thomas Taylor, so were much of the Platonic and Hermetic traditions. For the first time, a group of authors was consciously drawing on the world’sreligious traditions in order to develop a universalist perspective centered on the development of the literary, philosophical, and spiritual capacities of the individual. The Transcendentalists were exploring the world’s religions to better understand what it means to be human, how to become better people, wiser, and more cultured in the full sense of that term. The Transcendentalists and the culture they inherited can be better understood in the broad context of the Platonic tradition. In Platonic Mysticism,Idiscussthe Multiculturalism and Transcendentalism 517 history of Platonism with particular attention to how it was conveyed in a Western European Christian context via the seminal writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, for instance Mystical Theology, then through authors that include John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and the Cambridge Platonists. In American Gurus (2014), I demonstrated how deeply Emerson’s works in particular were imbued with Platonic allusions, in particular to Plotinus, but also to Neoplatonists like Iamblichus and Proclus. It is telling that Bronson Alcott had a bust of Plato in his study on a shelf above a bust of Jesus, and that throughout his life, he participated in and promoted public dialogues or “conversations,” as well as publishing conversations (dialogues) on spiritual topics with a group of children under his tutelage at Temple School in Boston. Platonism is important here because impelling it is the search for what is true. Platonism is dialogic; so too Transcendentalism was fundamentally dialogic. But dialogue did not exist for its own sake. Rather the purpose of dialogue was to move through conversation toward a deeper understanding of truth. In the Platonic tradition, truth is understood (as in modern science) to be universally applicable; what is true for one human being is true for another. It is not possible, as is commonly said today, to “have one’sown truth.” By definition, that is opinion, whereas truth is characterized by universality. Truth is one of the three classical transcendentalia,those being truth, goodness, and beauty. But in the modern academy, at least in much of the humanities, such a perspective is anathema. Truth, beauty, and the good are alleged to be merely rationalizations of power relations. Multiculturalism groups together select ethnicities or interest groups, but implicitly or explicitly rejects the European cultural tradition to which Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott belonged, as well as the universalism that impels their work. Through their essays, books, journals, and conversations, the Transcendentalists sought to investigate and demonstrate what is true, good, and beautiful. Such aspirations are rarely spoken aloud in the contemporary academic world. Multiculturalism as it is practiced in the contemporary humanities emphasizes external characteristics—skin color, social status, and gender identity, and so forth; its adherents seem much more interested in socio-political analysis and aims than in the philosophical and literary aspirations represented in Transcendentalism. Of course, Transcendentalism as a movement emphasized developing one’s inner life and in particular the quality of one’s life in light of what is beautiful, good, and true. Essentially, Transcendentalism and multiculturalism speak different languages; the first, the language of 518 A. Versluis secular spirituality, the second the language of power relations. And so Transcendentalism is in eclipse in the contemporary academy. Transcendentalism is in eclipse—that is, not currently visible. But it is perennial. What is perennial never dies; it is perpetually reborn for a new era. This is the meaning of the term “perennialism,” which is another way of describing the Platonic tradition. American Transcendentalism was a direct heir to the ancient Greek and particularly the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition not only in antiquity, but also as it reappeared later, for instance, in the Renaissance Platonism (and Hermeticism) of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Without doubt, this tradition will reappear in a new form at some point in the future. What is more, American Transcendentalism will reappear as an area of study within the academy. Certainly one can argue that the era of the American Renaissance is among the most influential and creative periods in American letters, and as such, it is of perennial interest. Harold Bloom remarked that American literature can be understood as divided between the period before and the period after Emerson. Transcendentalism is the pivotal movement of nineteenth-century American literature. American Transcendentalism is about the shared human journey toward understanding more deeply and realizing for oneself and in one’s work what is true and good and beautiful. It also represents and encourages our journey toward perceiving and depicting the sublime. Hence in art, the movement most associated with Transcendentalism is the Hudson River School of painters, artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher Durand, and Albert Bierstadt. Their works, often
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