notes on empiricism, rationalism, romanticism, and transcendentalism

1. Philosophical and Literary
Movements
European and American changes in
perspective

2. Empiricism
According to the ideas of empiricism, experience
is the only source of our knowledge. None of
us can truly know anything except through our
own senses. This was the idea of the tabula
rasa, that each of us is born as a blank slate
waiting to be affected by the experiences we
perceive through our own senses. Empiricism
denies any innate knowledge, any knowledge
unrelated to experience.

3. John Locke – 1632–1704
Father of Empiricism

4. Rationalism – 1650-1800
• Reason is the source of all knowledge.
• NOT
– Acceptance of authority
– Empiricism
– Spiritual revelation
The Founding Fathers of the U.S. were rationalists.
The Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution were planned, logical documents.
Washington, D.C. was a rationally planned city.

5. Rationalists at Work

6. The Age of Enlightenment
• The era when Rationalism was strongest.
• The time when doctrines (divine right of kings)
and institutions (monarchy, the church) were
viewed from the point of view of Rationalism.
• Led to a change in assumptions about those
doctrines and institutions.

7. Utilitarianism
• The right act or policy was that which would
cause "the greatest good for the greatest number
of people", also known as "the greatest
happiness principle", or the principle of utility. He
wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation:
• “ Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what
we ought to do, as well as to determine what we
shall do."

8. Jeremy Bentham – 1748-1832
advocate of Utilitarianism

9. The Romantic Movement –
late 18th C. to late 19th C.
• Stressed strong emotions and imagination
• Freedom from artistic correctness
• Rebellion against social conventions (rules)

10. Lord Byron
tossing aside social conventions

11. Transcendentalism
• Began with Emerson’s essay “Nature” in 1836
• Knowledge is derived from intuitive
sources, NOT from experience.
• Knowledge is from somewhere within us that
is beyond personal experience.
• Stressed the human connection with the
natural world
• Died out as a movement in the late 19th C., but
is it something we still live with?

12. Add to your Timeline:
• 1600 – William Shakespeare
• 1650 – Anne Bradstreet’s poetry published
• 1680 - Edward Taylor poetry
• 1692 – Salem witch trials
• 1776 – Declaration of Independence
• 1789 – French Revolution