For the transcendentalist, the "I" transcends the corporeal and yet nature is the embodiment of the transcendence and, or, the means to achieving transcendence, which gives way to a belief that the physical "I" is at the root of all transcendence. In practical terms, the transcendentalist is occupied with the natural over the synthetic (though it is doubtful that either Kant or Emerson would have couched it in those terms) and determines value as it relates to the individual.

Among the most noted of the Transcendentalist philosophers have been Emmanual Kant, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The connection between transcendentalism and utopian thinking is not always clear; inasmuch as the individual holds the highest measure of transcendence; however, the importance that is placed on nature and natural living within nature has spawned communal beliefs based on transcendental thought. As Catherine Keller sees it, "Our civilization," she writes, "is centered on the assumption that an individual is a discrete being: I am cleanly divided from the surrounding world of persons and places.... For our culture it is separation which prepares the way for selfhood. Reali

his head "bathed by the blithe air," and confess to becoming "a transparent eye-ball." It was through the experience of nature that he found transcendence: "I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."(1-10). For Emerson, the answer began in an acknowledgment of "an occult relation between man and the vegetable"(1:10). The human world reflected nature, and Emerson searched the empirical processes of nature to find the a priori meaning of human life. He found no contradiction in the belief that empiricism and transcendentalism were cohabitors of the same philosophical base for community.

According to Gaon, "Habermas formulates the principle as follows: a contested norm cannot meet with the consent of all of the participants in a practical discourse unless (U) holds, that is, unless all affected can freely accept the consequences and the side effects that the general observance of a controversial norm can be expected to have for the satisfaction of the interests of each individual" (quoted in Goan 688). Her argument, based on Habermas, follows that of Wilson in the belief that empiricism will have a greater effect on future utopian constructs than will transcendentalist thought. In his Selected Essays, Karl Otto Apel has argued for an approach to philosophy, which he calls `transcendental semiotics'. The book focuses on a discussion of central issues in `theoretical' philosophy (such as meaning, reference, truth, etc.); and offers methodological reflections on the advantages of the linguistic paradigm in transcendental philosophy. The aim of Apel's analysis is to confront the postmodern tendency to interpret the debate between metaphysics and empiricism. His argument is centered on the need for Transcendental examination of the empirical world in order to continue the process of theory into content as it applies to universality and, or, utopian considerations in future community planning.

8. Wilson, Edward O. "The Two Hypotheses of Human Meaning."

Transcendentalists could find. "In short, what Fourierism had to offer was not the replacement of poetry with substantiality ... but a substantial rendering of the poetic vision that was at the heart of Transcendentalism from its early days. It turns a mystical intuition of a patterned world into a practical program" (71). He believes that Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden were originally conceptualized through the Transcendentalist precepts and "what Fourierism did was to give a formal basis to the assumptions on which [the Brook Farmers] had been working all along" (88).

Some common words found in the essay are:
Waldo Emerson, Jurgen Habermas's, Miller Consideration, Edward Wilson, Otto Apel, Catherine Keller, Thoreau Whitman, Nature Emerson, Carlos Williams, Gaon Habermas, ralph waldo, brook farm, ralph waldo emerson, environmental ethics, waldo emerson, rights nature, natural rights, henry david thoreau, human nature, nature found, empiricism argument, university press, farm fruitlands walden, brook farm fruitlands, currents universal circulate,
Approximate Word count = 2317
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)