Change Through Thought- American Romantics and Radicals...

Change Through Thought- American Romantics and Radicals Many of the American romantics and radicals seek to inspire change through thought before action. First, Ralph Waldo Emerson promoted his ideas on the importance of nature and self-reliance. Second, Henry David Thoreau demonstrated his ideas on civil disobedience as well as sustainable independent living. Third, Margaret Fuller promoted her ideas of female equality. Fourth, Frederick Douglass showed a side of slavery that had not been seen before. Finally, Walt Whitman’s new style of writing changed writing and perceptions of America. None of these people promoted immediate change. Instead, they all inspired and promoted thought about their various topics, and hoped, through†¦show more content†¦I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty (Myerson 127). When one becomes the so-called transparent eye-ball, losing all petty self-centeredness, it is a way to see nature without necessarily interacting with it. You take in everything you see; yet you do not affect nature. You almost become a part of nature. In his essay Self-Reliance, written in 1841, Emerson stresses the importance of the self. Putting heavy emphasis on the individual, he writes: No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions (Myerson 321). Emerson suggests that people give in too easy to societal and governmental pressures. He wants the individual to be in control of right or wrong based upon his fundamentals. These two writings in particular were revolutionary in the realm of transcendentalism. 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