Transcendentalism, according to www. Dictionary.com, means a literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition. Transcendentalists believed that there is knowledge beyond what humans can see, hear, feel, smell, touch, and taste. Their theories were based on the philosophy of German philosopher Immanuel Kant. One of the theories they believed was the idea of solitude. It was an important theme to Emerson and Thoreau and both practiced and wrote about the importance of solitude in every persons life.

Thoreau stayed in Staten Island for one year to tutor Ralph Waldo Emerson¯s children and when he returned from this experience, he built a small cottage on Emerson¯s estate next to Walden Pond. He lived in this cottage for two years in complete solitude. Thoreau thought of solitude as necessary to every pe

Transcendentalism was a bunch of ideas that a group of people came up with. The idea of solitude is one of these ideas. Both Emerson and Thoreau demonstrate in their lives and also in their writing how important solitude is to achieve personal happiness. Both had periods where they left it all and lived alone. Both wrote non stop about independence. Independence was just one of the many goals that transcendentalists had in their minds to conquer.

It is easy to live in the world after the world¯s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.±

°I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant.±

Thoreau is saying that every man can live by the world, or by himself, but his idea of a great man is he who can balance out the two. During Thoreau¯s two year stay at Walden, he wrote a book that today is considered a classic. To him, it was a journal. To the world, it is a collection of ideas that many haven¯t even fathomed. I think Thoreau thought of solitude as something that people can not live without. To him, it was a complete necessity to life. When Thoreau talked about solitude and transcendentalism , I don¯t thi

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Approximate Word count = 1000
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)