transcendentalism

noun

tran·​scen·​den·​tal·​ism ˌtran(t)-ˌsen-ˈden-tə-ˌli-zəm 

-sən-

1

: a philosophy that emphasizes the a priori conditions of knowledge and experience or the unknowable character of ultimate reality or that emphasizes the transcendent as the fundamental reality

2

: a philosophy that asserts the primacy of the spiritual and transcendental over the material and empirical

3

: the quality or state of being transcendental

especially : visionary idealism

transcendentalist

ˌtran(t)-ˌsen-ˈden-tə-list 

-sən-

adjective or noun

Examples of transcendentalism in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Johnson spoke with us about the film’s origins, transcendentalism and never quite being done. — Los Angeles Times Staff, Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan. 2024

For much of the year, Alan Lightman lives less than a mile from Walden Pond, the Massachusetts spot where Henry David Thoreau popularized transcendentalism and its ideas about a direct connection to the divine through nature. — Danny Heitman, WSJ, 16 Mar. 2023

Though The Will to Live is lyrically rich with a kind of punk transcendentalism, the album sounds anything but natural. — Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 9 Sep. 2022

So was exploring how the ideals of transcendentalism (the philosophical movement led by Ralph Waldo Emerson) influenced his character. — Gregg Goldstein, Variety, 8 Sep. 2022

Hickey goes on to read Gober’s stacks of newspapers and boxes of rat poison placed within a paint-by-numbers wraparound wallpaper of a New England forest as situated between the history of American transcendentalism and the raging AIDS crisis. — Jarrett Earnest, The New York Review of Books, 8 June 2022

At the center of the story are Ralph Waldo Emerson and his protégé, Henry David Thoreau, who championed transcendentalism as a way to break with dogmas of the Old World so that Americans would be empowered to think for themselves. — Danny Heitman, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Dec. 2021

Word History

First Known Use

1803, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for transcendentalism

• absolutism
• adventurism
• aestheticism
• africanism
• agnosticism
• alcoholism
• anachronism
• anglicanism
• antagonism
• arianism
• asceticism
• astigmatism