Transcendentalism Transcendentalism is a newly founded belief and practice that involves man's interaction with nature, and the idea that man belongs to one universal and benign omnipresence know as the oversoul. The term was first introduced by German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and was published in his "Critique of Practical Reasoning". The impressions of transcendentalism by the American people were sketchy and obscure, but as magazines and books were published on the topic the coterie of transcendentalist spread. The authors of the nineteenth century books, essays, and philosophies were a reflection of these beliefs such authors