Transcendentalist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who believes that reality exists beyond the material world and that intuition and individual conscience provide deeper truth than reason or sensory experience alone
2. A believer in the supremacy of intuition and spiritual insight over empirical observation and rational analysis in understanding existence
3. Someone who holds that transcendent reality and truth are accessed through individual conscience and inner wisdom rather than material evidence or logical deduction

Etymology: The most striking thing about this word is how little of it is new: "transcendentalist" is simply "transcendental" with the suffix "-ist" added, and the "-ist" tail arrived in English through a long chain of borrowings from ancient Greek. The Greek ending "-istēs" marked a person who practised or followed something, and it passed into Latin as "-ista" and then into Old French as "-iste," before reaching Middle English as "-ist." The base word, "transcendental," carries the older weight. It comes from the Latin "transcendere," meaning "to climb over" or "to surpass," built from "trans" (across) and "scandere" (to climb). A transcendentalist is therefore literally one who "climbs beyond" the reach of ordinary evidence, and the image of rising above the material world is baked into the word from the start.

Synonyms: idealistic thinker, philosopher