Prabhu Guptara writes:  
"Transcendentalism (T) was inspired by certain strands of Indian  
philosophy both directly ... and indirectly (via the Romantic movement  
in the UK and the Continent, for instance)  
  
T contributed to the rise of the "green" movement, which is at least  
partly responsible for current efforts to re-orient economics from the  
purely mathematical to the broadly human, with impacts on related  
fields, e.g., in the move towards "full environmental costs accounting"  
(if I may call it that)"   
  
  
  
A standard source on Transcendentalism in New England was Van Wyck Brooks,  
The Flowering of New England.  As I read it, in the 1780s, Kant and Hegel  
said there is an innate knowledge within man that "transcends" the senses.  
This is the voice of God within man.  Sounds as though related to ideas of  
"natural law", as per Rousseau.  
  
As the child grows, experience with the world stills this moral sense.  
Carlyle and Coleridge brought Kant and Hegel's ideas to England, thence to  
New England by 1835.  They amended the "cold rationalism" of early  
Unitarianism.  Emerson et al. picked up on them, and became called  
"transcendentalists."  Emerson shows some influence from Indian sources - I  
don't know about Kant et al.  
  
Brooks may have overstated the role of New England.  Jefferson, of course,  
preached of natural rights - and fought against the theocrats of Connecticut  
to push through the First Amendment.  Unitarianism was more a Bostonian  
phenomenon.  
  
Anyway, belief in natural law - and the associated ideas of natural rights  
and egalitarianism - was strong in The Enlightenment and the Romantic Era  
that ended with a crash with the stolen election of 1876.  The neo-classical  
"revolution" in economics might be associated with a return to the "cold  
rationalism" of early Unitarianism - but here I am speculating, reaching  
beyond my knowledge.  Other views welcomed!  
  
Mason Gaffney