Volume 10, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2003
Alfred I. Tauber
Pages 89-103
The Philosopher as Prophet
The Case of Emerson and Thoreau
Emerson articulated his metaphysics of selfhood within a theistic framework; Thoreau reconfigured his ideas as a mystical pantheism. In this latter form, Transcendentalism offered twentieth century Americans a new religious sensibility based on an intimacy with nature, which became a spiritual and aesthetic resource for personal fulfillment.