The Story of the Concord School of Philosophy & Literature
“At the time when Germany itself is overpowered by the influence of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin, and the genius of materialism is getting so strong a hold everywhere, it is interesting to find that the Concord School reasserts with breadth and penetration the supremacy of mind.” – Harpers Magazine, August 19, 1881
One could fill a small library with the books written both by, and about, Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcotts, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Concord Authors and Transcendentalists.
In contrast, there is not a single book on the history of the “Concord School of Philosophy & Literature,” which not only can be seen as the blossoming of Transcendentalism, but which brought together other kindred streams that drew from the fount of American culture, including the Neo-Platonists from Illinois and the Hegelians/Aristotelians from St. Louis, to mention but two.
There is research to be done and a story to be told, a remarkable story that provides a veritable foundation for the further evolution of the physical, natural, social, and cognitive sciences toward a fully-realized spiritual science, or science of the spirit, in and for our time.
The story will be told, drama unfolded, through glimpses of the lives and labors of the “actors,” themselves, the 85 individuals, men and women, national and international, who stepped up to the podium at the Concord School of Philosophy & Literature, and presented their “offerings” on the altar of its “Hillside Chapel.” That is, kindred spirits of our day and age are invited to befriend one of the “actors” referred to and tell his or her story, contribute to this aspiring anthology — as summarized in the following 1884 Boston Herald Review:
“To barely exist through these years was something; to gain a hearing was more; to adhere steadily to a high and heroic purpose was more; to be spiritual, without being religious in the sectarian sense, was still more; and, through all these years, to do honest work, to steadily uphold the interests of intellectual and spiritual truth, in the larger sense, has been to do what has never before been done in the history of American thought and letters.”
For more about the anthology on the “Concord School”, click here.
For more about the history of the “Concord School”, click here.
For the summer programs from 1879-1888, click here.
For the Presenters / Actors in the Drama, click here.
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For more information, contact: Jean Ferlyns Leon at info@concord-ium.us