Transcendentalism Transcendentalism was a philosophy that became influential during the late 1700's and 1800's. It was based on the belief that knowledge is not limited to and solely derived from experience and observation. Transcendentalism also stated that the solution to human problems lies in the free development of individual emotions. According to transcendentalism, reality exists only in the world of the spirit. What a person observes in the physical world are only appearances, or impermanent reflections of the world of the spirit.
People learn about the physical world through their senses and understanding.
But they learn about the world of the spirit through another power, called reason. The transcendentalists defined reason as the personal, independent, and intuitive capacity to know what is absolutely true. In the United States, transcendentalism became both a philosophy and a literary, religious, and social movement. It began among Unitarians in New England and reached its peak during the 1840's. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leading American transcendentalist.