The New England Transcendentalists to some extent followed and creatively transformed
German transcendental philosophy. This German portion of their history, influence, and intellectual lineage is exceedingly vast and varied, involving such disparate authors, dramatists, scholars, philosophers, theologians, poets, educators, and reformers as
Johann Gottfried von Herder,
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,
Immanuel Kant,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling,
Friedrich Schiller,
Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher,
Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette,
David Friedrich Strauss,
Christian H. Weisse,
Christian Wolff, and
Novalis.
Not to mention the French philosophy of the time, which was in important ways a distillation of the German. The ideas of French philosophers such as
Benjamin Constant,
Victor Cousin, and
Théodore Jouffroy were highly regarded by the New England Transcendentalists as well.