Overview

The idea of the transparent eyeball first appeared in 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...

's essay Nature which was published in 1836. In this essay, Emerson describes nature

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

 as the closest experience there is to experiencing the presence of God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

. In order to truly appreciate nature, one must not only look at it and admire it but must be able to feel it taking over his/her senses. This process requires absolute "solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society" to uninhabited places like the woods where--

"We return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."

However, only a "few adults persons can see nature". For most people seeing is superficial. It is light illuminating the eye

Eye

Eyes are organs that detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons. The simplest photoreceptors in conscious vision connect light to movement...

 revealing what is physically evident as opposed to sun "shine[s] into the eye and heart of the child". "Emerson argues that outer and inner vision merge to reveal symbols in the natural landscape. Because of the radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts, natural facts serve as symbols of spiritual facts, so the natural world is perpetual allegory of the human spirit—an allegory to which the eye gives access".

"The image of the transparent eyeball has become a staple of nature mysticism

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

: in the midst of wild Nature, the self becomes one with being and god; differentiation, alienation and struggle cease".

"For Emerson, every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the soul and, while he ardently valorizes the physical eye’s potential to see in a way that discovers symbolic meaning, his most memorable metaphorical image for such potential, the transparent eyeball, posits a vision wherein the eye sloughs off its body and ‘egotism,’ merging with what it sees. It is within this transparent, disembodied state of total union with nature that Emerson claims ‘I am nothing; I see all’. The ‘all’ that Emerson seeks access is not simply harmony with nature or even knowledge, but perception of a deep unity between the human spirit and the natural world".

Origin

Emerson attended Harvard Divinity School

Harvard Divinity School

Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...

 in 1825 and by 1826 he applied for a license to preach at the Middlesex Association of Ministers. By 1832 Emerson left the Christian ministry but continued to believe in God. However, he held that God reveals his grandeur not only in scripture, but also through nature. “Emerson's reading in science soon after leaving the ministry was his effort to interpret God's natural book. As Emerson became increasingly interested in science, he eventually came to believe nature, not scripture, was the locus of revelation

Revelation

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...

. His desire to become a naturalist was intimately connected to his yearning to write a new bible of God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

's revelation in nature”.

Some scholars believe that the “transparent eyeball” passage is an echo of the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. “In Nature, Emerson fashions himself as a new prophet of nature, believing with Goethe that "prophetic vision" arises only in "slowpaced experiment". Vision arises from observing nature, where, as he writes in Nature, "All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature". The essay can be regarded as Emerson's attempt to make nature itself a bible” . In this sense, one need not spend Sundays at church but could simply retreat to the ‘woods’ and let nature inhabit his or her consciousness.
“The reconstruction of religion in Emerson’s nature works in a number of directions. First, there is an undeniable romantic-naturalism

Naturalism (philosophy)

Naturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know...

 in his writings. One can and should go out into nature, into the fields and forests and be renewed. It follows, then, that Emerson’s religiosity may be read as natural and not supernatural, which may account for his centrality in a tradition of arts and letters which dates to his decisive split with organized religion” . The significance of this shift resulted in Emerson’s paradigm-ic role for transcendentalism

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...

. “Transcendentalists believe that finding God depended on neither orthodox (Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

) nor the Unitarians' sensible exercise of virtue, but on one's inner striving toward spiritual communion with the divine spirit” .

In photography

Walker Evans

Walker Evans

Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera...

 is a renowned American photographer, known for his visionary process of aligning “photography with Emerson's original desire to absorb and be absorbed into nature, to become a transparent rather than simply reflective eye” . Walker spent his career during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 trying to capture images that would be a mirror representation of Americans surrounded by both nature and man-made objects existing in total harmony with one another.

Emerson's description of the “transparent eyeball” functions as a metaphor for the artist's ability to discern the essential nature of objects and as a way to stress that the transcendental is not formless. The "transparent eyeball" reflects nature's particulars, much in the way that a camera

Camera

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...

 lens exposes; and in the process illuminates … the "unrelieved, bare-faced, revelatory" facts . The transparent eyeball is about capturing and being a part of all of nature and its motion. The camera works in the same fashion. The camera exposes/illuminates all of nature in a single snapshot with more detail and visibility of nature that cannot be taken in by an unaided eye alone.

“Just as nature has to be experienced visually for its true meaning to shine forth, the photographic eye has to be present to capture the image. Contrary to what one might think, the "transparent eyeball" is not a free-floating entity, but a necessary link between the observer and the landscape surrounding him or her” .

In order to visually experience and appreciate nature, as Emerson desired through a transparent state, an individual has to view it. This is similar to the camera. In order to photograph an image, the individual must first view the scene. Then the individual capture what is seen. Thus, the “transparent eyeball” is not an entity that is free from constraints, but a tool that the individual needs in order becomes one with nature. However, it is not to be understood that “that Emerson did not believe in a fundamental god-driven unity underlying the worldly flux, but rather that art's role was to provide an insight into that unity”.

In literature

According to the Dr. Amy Hungerford the influence and use of the transparent eyeball in, Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

- winning author, Marilynne Robinson’s

Marilynne Robinson

-Biography:Robinson was born and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, and did her undergraduate work at Pembroke College, the former women's college at Brown University, receiving her B.A., magna cum laude in 1966, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D...

 novel Housekeeping

Housekeeping (novel)

Housekeeping is a novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson. It was published in 1980, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction , and given the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel.In 2003, the Guardian Unlimited named Housekeeping one of the 100 greatest novels of all...

 is palatable. Hungerford argues that Robinson’s protagonist Ruth narrates form the perspective of the “transparent eyeball".

Critiques

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General...

, is a Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning American author and prominent critic of transcendentalism

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...

, argues or rather forces us to imagine a different kind of observer; one that is conscious of his or her embodiment, conscious of his or her "particularity" in space and time, conscious of his or her subjectivity

Subjectivity

Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...

, conscious of the constructiveness

Constructiveness

Constructiveness is a faculty from the discredited pseudoscience discipline of phrenology. Constructiveness is the seat of initiative, creativity and originality. It confers the capacity to plan and construct, to design and invent, to organise and devise ways and means of carrying out projects with...

, the "falseness" of his or her vision. Dillard’s vision is different from Emerson’s because she is conscious of her presence which allows her to pay attention to the “falseness” of vision. In this sense, it is safer not to attain nor aim for the transparent eyeball ideal because vision is limited, and one should “not stalk the truth” of the places where it could be seen.

1. Print

• Christopher Cranch published a cartoon sketch of Emerson as the embodied transparent eyeball he titled "Emerson the Mystic".

• "Transforming A Transparent Eyeball", an article written by Erik Lounsbury on Costumer services and interactions in a technological product-based environment.

2. Music

• Mar Mushrooms, a German band, released an album in 2005 titled "The Transparent Eyeball".
• Samuel Lockridge titled a single “As a Transparent Eyeball We Became Human Beings” from his album, Shama El.