American Transcendentalism began as a protest against contemporary cultural and social mores. Transcendentalists believed in a spiritual state that transcends the physical and empirical. Transcendentalists felt that spiritual idealism could be reached not through the teachings of organized religion, but through personal intuition.

Originally Transcendentalism rejected the intellectualism of Harvard University and the Unitarian doctrine taught at the Divinity School there.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most prominent Transcendentalists, his 1836 work "Nature" was one of the seminal moments in Transcendentalism. Emerson encouraged self-reliance and independent thought.