Civil Disobedience
How does Civil Disobedience reflect ideas of transcendentalism?
Thoreau
Thoreau
Transcendentalism is a philosophy that we can transcend the limitations of our physical sphere in order to realize greater truth and individual freedom (or potential) in the process. Different writers approach the philosophy different way, but for Thoreau, as shown in Walden, it is very much about eschewing the strictures of our everyday lives. Civil Disobedience is an essay about how the limitations of civil government can sometimes inhibit our greater, moral freedom, and so we may consider ourselves to have the right to judge it by our own individual moral standards, in effect "transcending" its limitations.