Analysis+Nora+Jimenez

After marrying Lydia Jackson in 1835, he settled in Concord near Boston. The year 1836 was marked by the publication of his essay on __Nature__. He was thus to be greeted by the young generation who saw in him the new mentor of America. Thoreau was his neighbor and disciple, and became during his life a living illustration of the principles advocated by Emerson, particularly through his book __Walden__. In 1837, "The American scholar" is a speech in favour of the defense of a real American culture which, according to James Russell Lowell, "cut off the cable which linked America to British thought". He not only remains as the "philosopher of optimism" of the 19th century, but also as a champion of feeling for nature. He was inspired by Romanticism, and Hinduism, and developed an "existentialist" ethics of self-improvement. His essay "Self-Confidence" provided the basis of a new identity for America.
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson** was born in 1803 and died in 1882. At the age of eight, he became fatherless. After an austere youth and studies at Harvard, he first became an Unitarian minister in Boston before evolving into the famous essayist, poet. I am born a poet, of a low class without doubt, yet a poet. That is my nature and vocation. and popular philosopher that we know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were contemporaries and friends. They both belonged to the current of **Transcendentalism**, which defends the immanence of the All in each element, even the minutest, and within oneself. It is linked not only to German romanticism and idealism but also to the great Asian religions (Hinduism, Buddhism). It is not transcendence by means of the supernatural, but an inner transcendence. It consists in a transformation of the interiority by a mystical or poetical experience, by an experience of being one with nature. The individual and his action are seen as the essential factors in morals and politics, in science, and even in religion, where rituals are not considered to be as important as the inner experience and as outward behavior. Transcendentalism was born close to the Unitarian church, mainly established in New England. The Unitarians contest the Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit) which is not present in the Bible and insist on the human nature of Jesus. They also advocate self-discipline in daily life. The commitment of the believer has to lead to action: against poverty, ignorance, slavery or alcoholism. It is a humanistic and social religion.