Transcendentalism

American Transcendentalism, centred on Emerson and Thoreau, held that the individual's intuitive relationship to nature and the divine transcends the limitations of institutional religion and social convention. Drawing on German Idealism and Eastern thought, it championed self-reliance, the spiritual dimensions of nature, and the moral duty to resist unjust authority. Civil disobedience as a philosophical idea traces directly to Thoreau.