 Chapter One 

Transcendentalism and the Aesthetic Critique of Modernity

Thinking of the aesthetic as both potentially ideological and potentially utopian allows us to understand the social implications of modern aes- thetics. The aesthetic experience can serve to evade questions of justice and equality as much as it offers the opportunity for a vision of freedom. If the Transcendentalists stand at the end of a Romantic tradition which has always been aware of the utopian dimension of the aesthetic, why should they have cherished the consolation the aesthetic experience of- fers while at the same time forfeiting its critical implications, which have been so important for the British and the early German Romantics? Is the American variety of Romanticism really much more submissive than European Romanticism with all its revolutionary fervor? Is it really true that “the writing of the Transcendentalists, and all those we may wish to consider as Romantics, did not have this revolutionary social dimension,” as Tony Tanner has suggested (1987, 38)? The Transcendentalists were critical of established religious dogma and received social conventions – so why should their aesthetics be apolitical or even adapt to dominant ideologies? In fact, the Transcendentalists were well aware of the philo- sophical and social radicalism of the aesthetic – which, however, is not to say that all of them wholeheartedly embraced it. While the Transcendentalists’ American background (New England’s Puritan legacy and the Unitarian church from which they emerged) is crucial for an understanding of their social, religious, and philosophical thought, it is worth casting an eye across the ocean to understand their concept of beauty since the Transcendentalists were also heir to a long- standing tradition of transatlantic Romanticism which addressed the re- lationship between aesthetic experience, utopia, and social criticism. The Transcendentalists’ transatlantic context has recently been taken into ac- count in more detail by a number of critics. Barbara Packer has shown that “[t]he fruits of a half-century of European progress in literature, philosophy, natural science, and sacred criticism all arrived on American shores more or less at once” (1995, 357). This intellectual seachange cre- ated the sense of a new beginning and enabled the Transcendentalists to syncretistically use these European sources for their purposes. While it is 36 Radical Beauty true that Coleridge’s idiosyncratic exegesis of Kant’s critical philosophy and Schelling’s transcendental idealism took root with the Transcenden- talists, and that Coleridge changed Kant’s and Schelling’s ideas whenever necessary to fit his own religious scheme, this must not lead to the con- clusion that the Transcendentalists received their Kant and Schelling at second hand or that they were largely unsystematic thinkers who could not have cared less for the systematic aspects of European philosophy.1 In fact, George Ripley, perhaps the Transcendentalist most learned in German and French philosophy, translated and edited a series of contem- porary philosophical works. In Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature (1838), he introduced to his readers all varieties of British philosophy, translations of German Idealism and Romanticism, as well as Victor Cousin’s eclecticist philosophy. These volumes were standard reading in New England’s intellectual circles, and through them and various con- versational groups European philosophy was made available to a broad- er audience. In his 1876 history of the movement, O. B. Frothingham bluntly asserted that “[t]he Transcendental Philosophy, so-called, had a distinct origin in Immanuel Kant, whose ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ was published in 1781 and opened a new epoch in metaphysical thought” (1972, 1). While this claim is certainly too strong, it is nevertheless true that European philosophy, and with it modern aesthetics, was distinctly present in nineteenth-century New England.2 Thoreau and Brownson, for instance, had studied German and thus were able to read the original texts rather than having to rely on Coleridge’s idiosyncratic adaptations of German thought (cf. Richardson 1986, 11-14; Sattelmeyer 1988, 20).

1 Cf. Chai 1987, 1-14. A programmatic statement on the links between Ameri- can and German Romanticism comes from Martin Christadler (1983). While Cornel West establishes parallels between Emerson and the political situation in Europe (cf. 1989, 9-11), Branka Arsić contrasts Emerson’s and Kant’s no- tions of sight and beauty (2010, 70-5). For a reassessment of American Ro- manticism from a transatlantic perspective, see Zapf 1992 and Leypoldt 2009. For an early account of this transatlantic connection, see Wellek 1943. 2 The discrepancies between Kant and the Transcendentalists have been fre- quently exaggerated, just as Kant’s influence on the Transcendentalists has of- ten been belittled. Moreover, there are important historical parallels. Just as the Transcendentalists theorized the beautiful life in the time of the market revolution, Kant wrote in a time when the guild system, with its focus on the needs of smaller communities, was increasingly substituted by the anonymous relations of the market (cf. Scheible 1984, 146).