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