The Concord School of Philosophy was a lyceum

Lyceum movement

The lyceum movement in the United States was a trend in architecture inspired by Aristotle's Lyceum in ancient Greece....

-like series of summer lectures and discussions of philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 in Concord, Massachusetts

Concord, Massachusetts

Concord is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 17,668. Although a small town, Concord is noted for its leading roles in American history and literature.-History:...

 from 1879 to 1888.

History

Starting the Concord School of Philosophy had long been a goal of founder Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a...

 and others in the Transcendental

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...

 movement. He and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was an American journalist, author, and reformer. Sanborn was a social scientist, and a memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures...

 composed a prospectus for the school on January 19, 1879, which was sent to potentially interested people throughout the country.

The school opened in the summer of 1879; its first meeting was held in the study of the Alcott family home, Orchard House

Orchard House

Orchard House is an historic house museum in Concord, Massachusetts. It was the longtime home of Amos Bronson Alcott and family, including his daughter Louisa May Alcott who wrote and set her beloved novel Little Women there.-History:...

. A new home for the School was built for use the next summer with the financial support of William Torrey Harris

William Torrey Harris

William Torrey Harris was an American educator, philosopher, and lexicographer.-Early life and career:Born in North Killingly, Connecticut, he attended Phillips Andover Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. He completed two years at Yale, then moved west and taught school in St...

 and of his daughter Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...

. Sanborn was the school's secretary.

The school was based partly on Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's Academy. Many of the school's lectures and readings focused on reminiscences of the Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

 attended some of the school's meetings before his death, and was commemorated after; readings from Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

's then-unpublished journals were among the most popular events. In addition, there were many lectures on other philosophical topics — principally the neo-Platonism favored by Alcott and the Hegelianism favored by Harris, but series of lectures were also given on Kant

KANT

KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

 and Fichte, among others. The final meeting commemorated Alcott, who had died in 1888.

Further reading

• Austin Warren
  Austin Warren
  Austin Warren was an American literary critic, author, and professor of English.-Childhood and Education:...
  
  . "The Concord School of Philosophy." New England Quarterly 2:2 (April 1929), 199-233.

External links

• The Concord School of Philosophy, text from George B. Bartlett, Concord: Historic, Literary and Picturesque (1885), with additional photos