TRANSCENDENTALS. - In traditional philosophy these are the notions which, because of their maximum universality, apply to all things and are formally predicated of all things. The term derives from the verb "to transcend," referred in philosophy 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, spirit transcends matter, life transcends physico-chemical activities, the genus transcends the species. In traditional philosophy the terms "transcendent" and "transcendental" are used interchangeably, although preferably "transcendent" is said of a reality that surpasses another reality (God with respect to creatures), and "transcendental" of a notion that surpasses another in its extension (the genus with respect to the species).
In ancient thought the concept of transcendentality is elaborated especially in relation to being (v.) and its properties or most general attributes. In particular Aristotle insists on the transcendental character of the notion of being, which is the formal object of metaphysics (first philosophy) and a concept not merely 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 at the College, and the characteristic wooden figures of the Materi by Baldassare Pisciotta in the church of S. Michele.
Painting. - The most important pictorial works, though of various provenance, are gathered almost all in the Pepoli Museum. Very interesting are the fourteenth-century panels that come from the church of S. Agostino; a Pietà of the Tuscan school (14th century); a fifteenth-century polyptych by Taddeo di Bartolo; the Redeemer attributed to Tommaso de Vigilia. The Museum is also very well represented in seventeenth-century Neapolitan 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, consider as transcendental notions above all unity and also, under the influence of Plato, goodness. The doctrine, taken up by the Fathers (in particular St. Augustine, De mor. Manich., II; Solil., II), is systematically developed by medieval Scholasticism, also in dependence on Arab philosophy. St. Thomas (De Ver., q. 1, a. 1 and passim) enumerates five notions transcendent along with being, from which they are distinguished 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"); bonum, which indicates the suitability of being to the appetitive tendencies of the rational or irrational subject ("omne ens est appetibile"). A similar doctrine is found in Scotus (Oxon., I, dist. 8, q. 3) and in Suárez (Disp. Met., dist. 3, s. 1), who develops at length the transcendental properties of being.
Suárez's thought exercised a notable influence on modern philosophy, as appears in Wolff (Ontologia, § 169). Kant knew the Scholastic doctrine, but affirmed that the transcendentals do not express predicates of things, but rather the logical requirements of every cognition of things (Krit. d. rein. Vern., I, 1), and according to his theory of knowledge (v.) he attributed to the terms "transcendent" and "transcendental" a new meaning: transcendent is everything that in any way is beyond every possible experience (the noumenon [v]), and it is opposed to immanent (ibid., Tranz. Dial., Einl.); transcendental is the a priori condition, or necessary and universal form of experience, and it is opposed to the empirical data of experience itself. With Kant the term "transcendental" was thus turned from the ontological meaning and direction to the logico-gnoseological one of the subject. Of the Kantian transcendental forms only the 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 therefore, according to Kant, without value.
In modern philosophy the terms "transcendent" and "transcendental" are used for the most part in the Kantian sense or in an analogous sense, excluding the reference to being, as also appears in some forms of the philosophy of values (v.), where the transcendental attributes are considered as supreme "values" distinct from things.