Dictionary Information: Definition Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism (Tran`scen*den"tal*ism) (?), n.
[Cf. F. transcendantalisme, G. transcendentalismus.]

1. (Kantian Philos.) The transcending, or going beyond, empiricism, and ascertaining a priori the fundamental principles of human knowledge.
^ As Schelling and Hegel claim to have discovered the absolute identity of the objective and subjective in human knowledge, or of things and human conceptions of them, the Kantian distinction between transcendent and transcendental ideas can have no place in their philosophy; and hence, with them, transcendentalism claims to have a true knowledge of all things, material and immaterial, human and divine, so far as the mind is capable of knowing them. And in this sense the word transcendentalism is now most used. It is also sometimes used for that which is vague and illusive in philosophy.
2. Ambitious and imaginative vagueness in thought, imagery, or diction.