In 1836, they began to meet in the Boston home of an Unitarian clergyman, and their detractors soon called them the "Transcendental Club." They differed on many things, but agreed that human nature was comprised of a love of truth, appetites for pleasure and food, and spiritual aspirations. Above all they thought that a divine spark resided in each person and that salvation was getting in touch with divinity within each person. They looked for a lively faith, convinced that existing churches and theologies were lifeless. To find truth, they thought a one must rely upon intuition. Theodore Parker saw three basic of "primal intuitions:" immortality, natural law, and God. For them, a realm of truths transcended what could be learned through the senses.

      Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists believed that humans had certain ideas and understandings that came from neither the senses nor reason. In these respects Transcendentalists went beyond Jefferson who postulated a Natural Law found by reason and a "moral sense." Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and other Transcendentalists agreed there was a Natural Law that can be found by reason, but they relied upon what they thought was the human being's special consciousness of absolute truth. But like Jefferson, they saw that people were more than animals with reason.

      The Transcendentalists were considered religious thinkers but their concerns were ethical, not doctrinal. Like Jefferson, whose thought had a strong spiritual if not religious dimension, they knew that the success of the American political experiment depended upon people's ability to make moral judgments and discern truth. They were perfectionists out to reform the world. Here they combined the best elements of America's political and religious heritages. They were strong critics of human bondage and worked hard to end slavery. The Transcendentalists were also concerned that there was a growing tendency, especially in industry, to place profits and business considerations above ethical considerations and respect for human dignity.

      Yet their relatively privileged social status seemed to get in the way of developing sympathy for organized labor or a real understanding of the problems of the poor. Ralph Waldo Emerson, their most eminent member, questioned his obligation to help the poor and sometimes seemed to take the view that they should be left to their own devices, to sink or swim. He once asked a man "Are you my poor? questioning whether it was his obligation to help that person. Emerson is best remembered for his writings on individualism and self-reliance, which were already part of the nation's creed. The frontier experience reinforced these two virtues, as well as a very imperfect belief in equality. On the untamed and unsettled frontier, it mattered little who your parents were. Your persistence and talents mattered far more. Of course, Emerson arrived at his position through philosophical speculation.

       More than a century after Emerson wrote, many observers noted that too many people relied on the crowd for their standards of conduct; true individualism had become difficult because it required internalized goals and ideals, which in turn, rested on a well-developed moral code. In the modern age, where all values seem to be relative, it has become difficult to develop such a code. Individualism all too frequently has come to mean crass selfishness. While people look to the group for guidance in behavior, they feel little connection with others and complain that relationships have become too impersonal and that too many citizens have become apathetic. Of course, little more should be expected when agreement on fundamentals has broken down. This was not Ralph Waldo Emerson's version of individualism. His version of individualism required a strong dose of self-reliance; one did what was right when the crowd did not approve and when it did not even produce the desired results. It required nerve in the face of failure. At bottom, though, one needed a clear and absolute view of what was right.

      The transcendentalists raised intuition to the level of revelation. They seriously modified the traditional Protestant emphasis upon an individualism restrained by scriptural injunctions, theology, and reason. Sentiment, now consecrated as an expression of the divine, was unrestrained reason, tradition, theology, or scripture. When Emerson went to Harvard to study divinity he told a friend he would soon learn if he could improve upon Martin Luther and John Calvin; apparently deciding in the affirmative, he left without finishing his training. The trail to worshiping the imperial self began with Anne Hutchinson and the antinomians, but the transcendentalists did much to point the way. In time, there was a movement away from self-control to self-worship. Emerson and the transcendentalists did not envision an individualism that was unrestrained by morality or concern for the community. Nevertheless, their naive faith sentiment, the purity of human impulses, and "the unsearched might of man" did much to lay the groundwork for the self-centered American of the late Twentieth Century who "feels" rather than thinks, and chafes at any external restraints.

       Walt Whitman, author of Leaves of Grass and Democratic Vistas, was more successful than Emerson in pursuing the belief in human dignity and equality to its logical conclusions. He thought that the triumph of American principles would mean that common people would be sovereign everywhere in the world. He denounced all forms human abuse, be it against slaves, prostitutes, homosexuals, the poor, or other social outcasts. It was important to him that Americans permit people to be themselves. Whitman was a strong supporter of women's rights, betterment of education, an end to the death penalty, and civic improvements. Like many, he supported expansionism or "Manifest Destiny" but did not seem to realize this was an assault on the dignity of other human beings. He carried the best of Jeffersonian political philosophy and Transcendentalist humanitarianism to their logical conclusions. Some, including Emerson, were offended by his emphasis upon sensuality and sexuality. However, homosexuals were to take heart in the work of this kindred spirit. His lack of modesty and egoism also offended some. His verse represented a rejection of the conventions of English writings just as his lifestyle and worldview were a clear repudiation of societal norms. When the Young Intellectuals of the early Twentieth Century sought patterns for their rejection of American middle class culture, they found them in transcendental thought but were more likely to become disciples of Whitman than Emerson. Unlike Whitman, however, they were also interested in appropriating aspects of European culture.

       In a sense, Transcendentalists remedied deficiencies in Jeffersonian thought in their rejections of sexism, racism, and slavery. Henry David Thoreau, Emerson's close associate, developed a means of dealing with an unjust and abusive government. His approach was peaceful, unlike Jefferson's unrealistic call for occasional revolution. Thoreau, a poet and pencil-maker, refused to pay the Massachusetts poll tax because the state was sending troops to fight in the Mexican War. He believed it was an unjust war because it was an effort to extend the area under slavery. His essay on this subject was renamed "Civil Disobedience." It should be noted he was not advocating anarchism. Unlike the anarchist, who sees no need for government and law, Henry David Thoreau was willing to go to jail as the price for not paying the tax. In this way he also avoided complicity in what he knew to be an unjust war. He joined others in setting the precedent that asserting the primacy of conscience might require time behind bars. Legend incorrectly tells us that Emerson visited him there. Emerson never visited the jail and disapproved of his protégé's action, saying it was "mean and skulking, and in bad taste."

      We conveniently forget that another Transcendentalist had staked out this position before him or that he permitted family to pay his taxes after he had made his point. Thoreau's thought was to have a great influence upon Mohandas Gandhi, the father of Indian independence, Martin Luther King Jr., who inspired the African-American civil rights movement, as well as the antiwar movement of the 1960s.

      Margaret Fuller, another Transcendentalist, was almost as prominent as Emerson. She was well-educated and possessed one of the best minds in American history. She edited The Dial, the Transcendentalists' journal, and wrote Women in the Nineteenth Century, which is still a major feminist work. She argued forcefully for removal of restraints upon women, the opening of all occupations to them, and equality in every sense. Her tone was not shrill, and she wanted the liberation of all humans, regardless of sex. Though some Transcendentalists advocated positions that some could see as immoral, they were trying to call people to a higher morality. They believed that the success of democratic government ultimately rested upon the moral individual.

        Emerson and the Transcendentalists identified God ( ultimate Good) with nature and saw evil as the absence of good. He thought that out of evil "comes good as naturally and inevitably as the beautiful flower and the nourishing fruit out of the .... ground." It was a naively optimistic faith, and Americans, of course, were most attune to nature. Others who were not transcendentalists understood that evil was a real force in the world but still identified America with virtuousness. Herman Melville saw America "Not a Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God's good pleasure, and in the fullness and mellowness of time."

                    Individualism and Postmodernism

A recent AARP report on the willingness of children to care for elderly family members provides a concrete illustration of the problem. Less than 20% of white Americans were found willing to care for or financially support the care of elderly relatives. On the other hand, 42% of Asian-Americans, 34% of Hispanic Americans, and 28% of African Americans were willing to do so. Those longest and most exposed to capitalist values were least willing to help their elders; those with the least exposure expressed the strongest family values. A high school senior in Colorado Springs recently reported that many of her friends approach everything in life as consumers. This faith in choice, she noted, "makes them feel, as one of them says, ‘not really a part of any culture,’ that is, except a part of the consumer culture."

         Movement in this direction was greatly accelerated in the 1960s, when postmodern culture took shape. Postmodern culture also appeared in Europe, and seemed to have many positive effects. To a limited extent it also seemed to somewhat weaken community values in some countries there. In the United States, on the other hand, it has had a devastating effect on community values, particularly on our willingness to look after the poor, weak, and marginalized. With time, the American outlook toward the world community was also to change to a more selfish and domineering one. Perhaps these changes were due to the blending of postmodernism, intense individualism, and its offspring materialism. 

            The term postmodernism refers to both a culture and a way of thinking—an often contradictory set of sentiments and notions that are both a reaction to modernism and sometimes its outgrowth. They are marked by skepticism, atomism, devotion to pluralism and respect for " the other," and a profound distrust of humanism, history, universals, authority, and institutions. For postmodernists, meaning is ephemeral and fragmentary.

            Postmodern culture has been called "a profound shift ion the structure of feeling" that began to take form in the 1960s. It is not clear that culture has yet changed enough to refer to a postmodern age. Postmodernity was an outgrowth of the counterculture, except that rebels of that era did have a strong and definable normative structure as it concerned matters of racial justice, war and peace. The rebels of the sixties often emerged from their efforts to transform society.    Disillusioned and contemptuous of conventional values and formulations, they retreated into self-absorption.  In the U.S., they found that the conventional image of their nation hid and justified the marginalization of African-Americans, Hispanics, and women. Postmodernists celebrated the diversity and the autonomy of the other.

       Stephen L. Carter has suggested that civility began to decline in America around 1965, the year he thinks postmodernity or postmodern culture began. Before then, he thought, there was but one image of the American experience, and it was underpinned by everlasting verities. There is a need for common meanings, but it is difficult to fault postmodernists who remind us that the old image of America made little room for the Other, particularly African-Americans, Hispanics, the poor, and to a considerable extent women. Any new common vision must be more inclusive and value genuine pluralism and equality as much as it does enterprise and individual liberty. Nostalgia, the response of many critics of postmodernity, is a foolish response and does not address very serious flaws in the old worldview. 

    The prophets of the counterculture of the 1960s were often shrill and deserve some of the blame for the decline of civility. However, those who reacted against counterculture and postmodrn society  have been far more shrill and for a much longer time. While the critic's lifestyles may be as traditional as they claim, they are in some ways more the children of postmodernity than the people they detest due to their lifestyles or identities. The New Right exemplifies the  breakdown of community, a turn toward narcissism, a distrust of reason and science, and the enthronement of egoism or selfish individualism that postmodernity unleashed in America.