from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
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.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
2. Ambitious and imaginative vagueness in thought, imagery,
or diction.
[1913 Webster]