transcendentalism
n. any philosophical position holding that ultimate reality lies beyond the level of sensory appearances or empirical investigation, such as Plato’s theory of forms of Greek philosopher Plato (c. 429–347 bce). The philosophies of German thinkers Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) are later examples of transcendentalism. The philosophical ideas of U.S. essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and some of his New England contemporaries, which are based upon a search for reality through intuition, are also described as transcendentalist. See also idealism; mysticism. —transcendental
adj.
—transcendentalist
adj.