Denizens of Concord by Mark Bauerlein | Articles | First Things

The premise of Transcendentalism was that social improvement and moral elevation were an individual matter. In Gross’s words, “the route to reform ran through individual consciousness, one soul at a time.” Utopian schemes such as Brook Farm were idealistic, but doomed. The most benign and well-intentioned institutions, the Transcendentalists believed, inevitably slipped into corruption and all-too-human conflict, and that included churches. When Thoreau’s sisters urged him to attend a state abolitionist convention and sign on to its statements, the man refused in spite of his ferocious opposition to slavery (he later would defend John Brown). No group action for him. To the Transcendentalist, society itself was a threat to personal integrity. “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” Emerson famously pronounced in “Self-Reliance,” an assertion that doesn’t allow for exceptions.