TRANSCENDENTALS. — In traditional philosophy, these are the notions which, by reason of their maximum universality, apply to all things and are formally predicated of all things. The term derives from the verb “to transcend,” philosophically referred to something that in some way surpasses another because it belongs to a higher order: in this sense God transcends nature and the world as their principle and efficient cause, the spirit matter, life physical-chemical activities, the genus the species. In traditional philosophy, the terms transcendent and t. are used promiscuously, although preferably a reality that surpasses another reality is called transcendent (God in relation to creatures), and t. a notion that surpasses another in its extension (the genus in relation to the species).
In ancient thought, the concept of transcendentality was being (v.) and its most general properties or attributes. In particular, Aristotle insists on the t. character of the notion of being, which is the formal object of metaphysics (first philosophy) and a concept not simply generic, but transcendent
of the Annunziata. Eighteenth-century works are the bronze sketch for an equestrian monument by Serpotta, in the Museum; the high relief by Ignazio Marabitti in the Collegio; and the characteristic wooden figures of the Materi by Baldassare Pisciotta in the church of S. Michele.
Painting. — The most important paintings, though of varied provenance, are gathered almost entirely in the Museo Pepoli. Of great interest are the fourteenth-century panels from the church of S. Agostino; a Pietà from the Tuscan school (fourteenth century); a fifteenth-century polyptych by Taddeo di Bartolo; and the Redeemer attributed to Tommaso de Vigilia. The Museum also has a significant representation of Neapolitan seventeenth-century painting, with works by Salvatore Rosa, Solimena, and Ribera. Attractive
all the categories, genera, species, and differences (Met., IV). Aristotle further notes the transcendentality of other notions, such as unity (v.), truth (v.), and goodness (v. BENE) The Neoplatonists (Plotinus, Ennead., V), together with truth and beauty, regard above all unity, and also, under Plato’s influence, goodness, as t. notions. The doctrine, taken up by the Fathers (especially St. Augustine, De mor. Manich., II; Solil., II), was developed systematically by medieval scholasticism, also under the influence of Arabic philosophy. St. Thomas (De Ver., q. 1, a. 1 and passim) enumerates five transcendental notions alongside being, from which they differ only by a logical distinction: res, which expresses the essence or quiddity of being; unum, which indicates its indivision; aliquid, which signifies the distinction of each individual being from every other reality; verum, which expresses the conformity of being with thought (“omne ens est intelligibile”); and bonum, which indicates the conformity of being with the appetitive tendencies of the rational or irrational subject (“omne ens est appetibile”). An analogous doctrine is found in Scotus (Oxon., I, dist. 8, q. 3) and Suárez (Disp. Met., dist. 3, s. 1), who extensively develops the t. properties of being.
Suárez’s thought exerted considerable influence on modern philosophy, as is evident in Wolff (Ontologia, § 169). Kant knew the scholastic doctrine, but asserted that the t. do not express predicates of things; rather, they express the logical requirements of every cognition of things (Krit. d. rein. Vern., I, 1). In knowledge (v.), he assigned new meanings to the terms transcendent and t.: transcendent is everything that in any way lies beyond all possible experience (the noumenon [v.]), and it is opposed to immanent (ibid., Tranz. Diol., Eiml.); t. is the a priori condition, or necessary and universal form, of experience, and is opposed to the empirical data of experience itself. With Kant, therefore, the term t. was turned from an ontological meaning and orientation toward the subject’s logical-epistemological one. Of Kant’s t. forms, only empirical use is legitimate, because they are necessarily connected with the phenomenal data of experience to which alone they refer: every metaphysical use of them is consequently, according to Kant, devoid of value.
In modern philosophy, the terms transcendent and t. are used for the most part in the Kantian sense or in an analogous sense, excluding reference to being, as is also evident in certain forms of the philosophy of values (v.), in which t. attributes are regarded as supreme “values” distinct from things.