transcendentalism Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Notice of William B. Greene, Transcendentalism, etc

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“New Publications.” The Religious Magazine and Monthly Review. 45, 5 (May, 1871), 544. TRANSCENDENTALISM, and THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS, and the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer, are the titles of two remarkable pamphlets by Mr. William B. Greene, and will furnish what William Corbett would call ” a bone to gnaw,” to those who have a liking for such hard problems in Psychology. We look upon Mr. Greene as an able and independent writer, less satisfactory, perhaps, than he would be were it not for the slight excess of individualism which marks his productions.

“A Transcendentalist in Political Economy”

October 27, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

Reading through William B. Greene’s various essays on New England Transcendentalism, perhaps the most puzzling question is: “Why does he care? What’s the Big Deal?” Greene clearly looked up to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and just as clearly tried to make that respect clear, even as he ripped into transcendentalism. He was not intellectually slavish in his admirations. By 1845, when he published the first of the works on transcendentalism, Greene had already made at least one attempt to rectify what he saw as errors in Orestes Brownson’s formulation of the “doctrine of life” and its consequences. Later, his use of […]

William B. Greene’s Articles on Transcendentalism

October 25, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

Bibliography: “Mr. Emerson and Transcendentalism.” American Whig Review (March 1845). “The Bhagvat Gheeta and the Doctrine of Immortality.” American Whig Review (September 1845). “Human Pantheism.” Spirit of the Age, I, 349. The first two essay were condensed into the 1849 pamphlet Transcendentalism, which was further condensed into “Human Pantheism,” and then revised into the 1871 Transcendentalism, which was reprinted in 1872 in The Blazing Star (probably from the same plates) with one additional, final paragraph added. A full bibliographic essay and content analysis is in preparation. MR. EMERSON AND TRANSCENDENTALISM. I. PERHAPS some of our readers are still ignorant of […]

Just a bit more on Greene and Transcendentalism

August 8, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

Philip F. Gura has a useful article, “Beyond Transcendentalism: The Radical Individualism of William B. Greene,” in a collection called Transient and Permanent: The Transcendentalist Movement and Its Contexts (Mass. Historical Soc., 1999), edited by Charles Capper and Conrad Edick Wright. He concentrates on Greene’s philosophical and theological writings from the 1840s, but also speculates a bit on Greene’s reasons for leaving the pulpit in West Brookfield in 1850. Greene’s relationship to Orestes Brownson, who was an important early mentor, is also explored a bit. Dean Grozdin’s American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2002) adds a […]

William B. Greene, “Song of Espousal” (1840)

August 7, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

We find in the “TOKEN” for 1841, the following beautiful poem from the pen of Lieut. GREENE, son our our esteemed Postmaster, Nathaniel Greene, Esq. It breathes the very soul of martial poesy, and resembles in spirit the celebrated “Sword Song” of Kerner, which once rung through the German forces, calling them to valiant deeds.–Boston Eve. Gazette

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Mutualist and transcendentalist bits — William B. Greene

August 6, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

William Batchelder Greene (1818-1878), the “American Proudhon,” is a strangely underdocumented character, given his importance to the individualist anarchist tradition. He has yet to find his biographer, though many of his contemporaries considered his life interesting enough to mention in other contexts. This entry from George Willis Cooke’s Historical and Biographical Introduction to the Rowfant Club reprint of The Dial gathers some of those accounts (and I have gathered the relevant text in the Libertarian Labyrinth.) We know that there are articles and letters in periodicals going back into the early 1840s which have, at best, been mentioned as sources […]