Transcendent, or Transcendental

Transcendent, or Transcendental (from trianscendere, to go beyond), words employed by various schoolmen, particularly Duns Scotus, to describe the conceptions that, by their universality, rise above or transcend the ten Aristotelian categories. Thus, according to Scotus, Ens, or Being, because it is predicable of substance and accident alike, of God as well as of the world, is raised above these by including or comprehending them. Again, the predicates assumed by Scotus to belong to Ens, or simple existence, viz. the One, the True, the Good-Unun, Verum, Bonum-are styled transcendent because applicable to Ens before the descent is made to the ten classes of real existence. According to Kant, transcendental applies to the conditions of our knowledge which transcend experience, which are a priori, and not derived from sensitive reflection. Between the hitherto convertible terms transcendental and transcendent Kant drew a distinction of considerable importance in understanding his own system. By the word transcendental he designates the various forms, categories, or ideas assumed to be native elements of human thought; implying that, although they are not products of experience, they are manifested only in experience such as space and time, causality, etc. The word transcendent Kant reserves for those among the transcendental or a priori elements that altogether transcend experience. They may seem to be given in experience, but they are not really given. Such are the "Ideas of the Pure Reason," God, an immaterial soul, etc. Transcendental elements, when legitimately applied to experience, as causality and relation, are called immanent. See Chambers's Encyclop. s.v.; Fleming and Krauth, Vocab. of Phil. Science, s.v.