In all these various meanings there is preserved a generic resemblance to the original signification of the term transcendentalism. The transcendentalists one and all, dwell in the regions beyond experience, and, if they do not condemn experience as untrustworthy, at least they value experience only in so far as it is elevated,sublimated, and transformed by the application to it of transcendental principles. The fundamental epistemological error of Kant, that whatever is universal and necessary cannot come from experience, runs all through the transcendentalist philosophy, and it is on epistemological grounds that the transcendentalists are to be met. This was the stand taken in Catholic circles, and there, with few exceptions, the doctrines of the transcendentalists met with a hostile reception. The exceptions were Franz Baader (1765-1841), Johann Frohschammer (1821-1893), and Anton Günther (1785-1863), who in their attempt to “reconcile” Catholic dogma with modern philosophical opinion, were influenced by the transcendentalists and overstepped the boundaries of orthodoxy. It may without unfairness be laid to the charge of the German transcendentalists that their disregard for experience and common sense is largely accountable for the discredit into which metaphysics has fallen in recent years.
