Meaning of Transcendental | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A transcendentalist.
   obsolete
2. Any one of the three transcendental properties of being: truth, beauty or goodness, which respectively are the ideals of science, art and religion and the principal subjects of the study of logic, aesthetics and ethics.
   Christian, plural-normally

Equivalents

Examples

“In deference to Christian usage we can say that the transcendentals constitute the Logos within which everything has its being and according to which everything is made.”

“These predicates of Being are what the Medievals called, using a term that will have a fertile future, "transcendentals" (often called the "universals") because they transcend all particular genera, following the example of Being.⁹⁶ A quarrel over these transcendentals even shook the later Middle Ages. The quarrel stemmed from the question of whether the existence of these transcendentals was real or intellectual (also called nominal).”

“The medieval doctrine of the transcendentals is closely connected with a metaphysical conception of reality, but is there a science of being in William of Ockham (ca. 1285-1347)?”

“Another fascinating thing about the transcendentals is that each is fully contained in the others. When you appreciate beauty, for example, you recognise the presence of goodness and truth. When you grasp the truth about something you experience a moment of beauty in, perhaps, the simplicity or power of the insight. When you observe goodness in the actions of another person you are seeing truth and beauty in operation.”

CEFR level