Education of the republic of uzbekistan termez state university foreign philology faculty department of english language and literature

CONCLUSION

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a primary figure in the Transcendental movement, openly criticized the progression of democracy in America, promoting instead a philosophy that shifted the nation of many to a nation of one. With "The American Scholar," he aspired to intercept the current American democracy "in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, -- a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man" and substitute it with the Transcendental democratic ideal (1610). Just as a finger and an elbow cannot perform correctly without being members of one common trunk, a "planter" and a "tradesman" cannot succeed until they realize that they are also of a common body (1610). By emphasizing individuals' capability to, as Patell states, peel "away differences in order to reach a common denominator that will allow them to make claims about all individuals," Emerson attempted to unite Americans (443). Looking inside themselves and investigating the truths of their own beings, Americans would no longer wish to preserve their present status as a collection of separated citizens who struggle to exist as one country. They would instead create one nation, an unpolluted democracy that thrives because its individuals understand the universality of human design. [4.p4]

This period started with the publication of R. W. Emerson's Nature, an essay, in 1836. This text had a tremendous influence on many thinkers of the time, and was considered as the manifesto of a new movement, that was soon called "Transcendentalism". [3.p1]

In his essay, Emerson outlines the essential elements for the development of the American scholar. First, Emerson communicates the scholar's inevitable relationship with the natural world and the Transcendental learning process inherent in the observation of nature. Nature symbolizes the physical world, but at the same time its laws are the metaphysical exhibitions of the human mind. Emerson suggests that, through observing nature, the scholar "shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess" (1611). Emerson believed that, for the scholar, realizing the connection between humans and nature was a primary gateway to understanding: "And, in fine, the ancient precept, 'Know thyself,' and the modern precept, 'Study nature,' become at last one maxim" (1611). The American scholar was to direct America to a true democracy using the natural world to understand the common goals innate in all human beings. [4.p7]