Emerson and Thoreau or Steps Beyond Ourselves

The essays collected in this volume circle around the notion and the imagery of transcendence, a concept crucial not only to the Transcendentalist movement proper with Emerson and Thoreau as its key figures, but also to their antecedents in New England Puritanism (here represented by RogerWilliams and John Cotton), to their followers in twentieth-century Modernism (notably William Carlos Williams), and to our own time. Highly critical of contemporary politics, society, and culture, the Transcendentalists also challenged the objectivist claims of the “methods” or “ways” advocated by the sciences. The metaphysics of the Emersonian scholar as well as the Thoreauvian saunterer revitalize the imagery of the way in an attempt to engage the world in a hermeneutical dialogue – a project that is timelier than ever in order to overcome the crippling consequences of the “two-cultures” split.