Transcendentalism. The words transcendental and transcendent (transcendentalis, transcendens) were employed by various Schoolmen, in particular Duns Scotus, to describe the conceptions that, by their universality, rise above or transcend the ten Aristotelian Categories (q.v.). Thus, according to Scotus, Ens, or Being, because it is predicable of substance and accident alike, of God as well as of the world, is raised above these by including or comprehending them; it has the same relation to the sum of the categories as the summum genus to the various genera within a single category. Further, the predicates assumed by Scotus to belong to Ens, or simple existence—the One, the True, the Good—are styled transcendent, because applicable to Ens before the descent is made to the ten classes of real existence.
Between the hitherto convertible terms, transcendental and transcendent, Kant himself drew a distinction of considerable importance for the understanding of his system. By the word 'transcendental' he designates the non-experiential, a priori elements of thought (see KANT)—especially the forms and categories (space and time, causality, &c.) which in his view, though they are not products of experience, are manifested only in experience, and contribute an essential element in all experiential knowledge. The word 'transcendent' Kant reserves for those among the transcendental or a priori elements that transcend and lie beyond all experience; they may seem to be given in experience, but they are not really given, and are in so far illegitimate as cognitions (though belief in them may be attained in other ways). Such are the 'ideas of the pure reason,' God, an immaterial soul, &c.
For post-Kantian systems which affirmed the identity of subject and object the distinction of transcendental and transcendent ceased to exist, and absolute knowledge was practicable; such systems are said to be or contain transcendentalism. 'Transcendental Philosophy' was Schelling's own name for an important part of his system (see SCHELLING). Oken and others carried much of this transcendentalism into their a priori construction of the nature-philosophy—in which in some cases scientific fact had to yield to speculative deduction. Transcendental has also often been used by 'common-sense' philosophers and the association school for the a priori generally. And in vulgar parlance the word applies to what is disapproved of as abstruse, speculative, obscure, fantastic, and as such absurd; it is specially familiar as a criticism of almost any form of idealism. See IDEA.
The epithet of Transcendental School has come, however, to be specially associated with a group of American authors and thinkers, who early in the 19th century led and cherished a wide-spread reaction against time-honoured Puritan prejudices, humdrum orthodoxy, old-fashioned metaphysics, and materialistic philistinism and utilitarianism. The movement was identified with idealism, vague pantheism, mysticism, and eclectic orientalism, and had at times a distinct flavour of the pedantic, the paradoxical, and the extravagant. Among the main exciting causes were the influence of Carlyle and the discovery of the new world of German literature. Brook Farm (q.v.) was one outcome of the school. The first meeting of the Transcendental Club took place in 1836 in the house of George Ripley (q.v.); other conspicuous members of the school were Margaret Fuller and Theodore Parker. Many well-known American authors, such as Hawthorne, have at some time shown affinities that way. But the thinker who most effectively summed up what was best in the movement, gave it the most permanent expression, and secured the widest hearing, was Ralph Waldo Emerson (q.v.). See O. B. Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England (New York, 1876).