JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT Music and unity John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893) was an American thinker, an influential music critic, and a member of the American Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century (which also included Emerson and Thoreau). As a young man he studied at Harvard and was ordained a Unitarian minister, but quickly decided to leave the ministry. He joined the Transcendentalist community at Brook Farm, and later became a music critic. In 1950 Dwight started his own journal of music, which...

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) was a major German philosopher, considered to be the founder of German idealism, a philosophical movement of the 18th-19th centuries that revised ideas from Kant’s philosophy. Fichte wrote about a variety of topics, including knowledge, the self, consciousness, religion and morality. For several years he was very influential among German philosophers, but later in his life his popularity declined, eclipsed by Hegel’s influence. Fichte was born to a simple family,...

Ralph Waldo Emerson FRIENDSHIP AS ELEVATING THE SOUL   Emerson (1803-1882) was an American philosopher, writer and poet, who was the leader of the Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century.   The following passage is adapted from Emerson’s essay “Friendship” (published in Essays: First Series in 1841). In this essay, Emerson presents a sublime vision of friendship – so sublime that it is almost impossible for humans to achieve it fully. True friendship is not for fun or convenience, but for...

FRIEDRICH EDUARD BENEKE Morality expresses the ideal human essence Friedrich Eduard Beneke (1798-1854) was a German philosopher who struggled against the philosophical norms of his time, and throughout his life was persecuted for his views by academic and political authorities. He studied philosophy at the University of Berlin with the feeling that his mission was to open a new path for philosophy. In his dissertation, the 24-year old Beneke passionately attacked Kantian philosophy, arguing against Kant’s idea of apriori knowledge. Instead,...