Transcendentalism meaning : The transcending, or going beyond, empiricism, and ascertaining a priori the fundamental principles of human knowledge. Ambitious and imaginative vagueness in thought, imagery, or diction. A philosophy which holds that reasoning is key to understanding reality (associated with Kant); philosophy which stresses intuition and spirituality (associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson); transcendental character or quality. A movement of writers and philosophers in New England in the 19th century who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths.