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noun

Transcendentalism n.

(Kantian Philos.) The transcending, or going beyond, empiricism, and ascertaining a priori the fundamental principles of human knowledge. Note: 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.

Ambitious and imaginative vagueness in thought, imagery, or diction.

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Etymology of 'Transcendentalism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Transcendentalism" Quotes from Famous Books

... them, in far-off workshops, busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it, the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth—that poetic agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all—is the real life of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, ...

— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... philosophy was named "Transcendentalism" by Kant's followers, because it included ideas which were beyond the range of experience. It became popular in Germany, as Platonism, to which it is closely related, became popular in ancient Greece. It has never been accepted in France, where scepticism still predominates, ...

— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... scruple, of egoistic policy with his stiffness for doctrine, gave him an advantage over Danton, that made his life worth exactly three months' more purchase than Danton's. It has been said that Spinozism or Transcendentalism in poetic production becomes Machiavellism in reflection: for the same reasons we may always expect sentimentalism in theory to become under the pressure of action a very self-protecting guile. Robespierre's mind was not rich nor flexible enough for true statesmanship, ...

— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... A great wave of transcendentalism seems to have passed over biological thought in the early 19th century, arising mainly in Germany, but powerfully affecting, as we have seen, the thought of Geoffroy and his followers. Many ideas were common to the French and German schools ...

— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... is not so abstract, nor does he border on transcendentalism, like Coleridge, who notwithstanding these peculiarities I am yet fond of reading. Degerando opens for you your own heart, and not only opens it, but gives you the means of self-control at every ...

— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... The transcendentalism of one age, shorn of the peculiar shading given to it by the individuality of the mind through which it first manifests itself, becomes the hard "common ...

— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

Words linked to "Transcendentalism" : transcendental, philosophy