Transcendental Politics and Reform in Black and White

Abstract

Scholars of the period generally agree that Ralph Waldo Emerson was the nation’s most important cultural representative during his lifetime. He has been called America’s first public intellectual, a man whose influence on the arts, philosophy, and religion was second to none. When it comes to politics and reform, however, there has been a good deal of disagreement. Early on, the scholarly consensus was that Emerson stood aloof from politics and was distanced from the reform movements of his day. Beginning in the 1990s, however, a series of influential publications established that, from the 1840s to the Civil War, Emerson was deeply involved in the politics of reform, especially the antislavery movement. While acknowledging this fact, some scholars argue that Emersonian transcendentalism and political activism are at odds with each other, and that Transcendentalism is ill suited to social and political reform because it calls for a self-reliant disengagement from society and its distractions. This essay examines Peter Wirzbicki’s Fighting for the Higher Law: Black and White Transcendentalism Against Slavery, a work that makes a new and important contribution to the argument for Transcendental activism by establishing, for the first time, the strong influence of Transcendentalism among Black intellectuals, activists, and reformers in the antebellum period. This essay also shows why Transcendentalism, by its very nature, was an inspiration to reformers seeking racial equality.