Transcendentalism

The terms transcendent and transcendental are used in various senses, all of

which, as a rule, have antithetical reference in some way to experience or the

empirical order.

(1) For the Scholastics, the categories are the highest classes of "things that are

and are spoken of". The transcendentals are notions, such as unity, truth,

goodness, being, which are wider than the categories, and, going beyond them,

are said to transcend them. In a metaphysical sense transcendent is opposed by

the Scholastics and others to immanent; thus, the doctrine of Divine

Transcendence is opposed to the doctrine of Divine Immanence in the

Pantheistic sense., Here, however, there is no reference to experience. (See

IMMANENCE.)

(2) In the loosest sense of the word any philosophy or theology which lays stress

on the intuitive, the mystical, the ultra-empirical, is aid to be transcendentalism.

Thus, it is common to refer to the New England School of Transcendentalism, of

which mention is made further on.

(3) In a stricter sense transcendentalism refers to a celebrated distinction made

by Kant. Though he is not consistent in the use of the terms transcendent and

transcendental, Kant understands by transcendent what lies beyond the limits of

experience, and by transcendental he understands the non-empirical or a priori

elements in our knowledge, which do not come from experience but are

nevertheless, legitimately applied to the data or contents of knowledge furnished

by experience. The distinction is somewhat subtle, Yet, it may be made clear by

an example. Within the limits of experience we learn the uniform sequence of

acorn and oak, heat and expansion, cold and contraction, etc., and we give the

antecedent as the cause of the consequent. If, now, we go beyond the total of

our experience and give God as the cause of all things, we are using the

category "cause in a transcendent sense, and that use is not legitimate. If,

however, to the data of sequence furnished by experience we apply the a priori

form causation, we are introducing a transcendental element which elevates our

knowledge to the rank of universal and necessary truth: "Every effect has its

cause." Kant, as has been said, does not always adhere to this distinction. We

may , then, understand transcendent and transcendental to refer to those

elements or factors in our knowledge which do not come from experience, but

are known a priori. Empirical philosophy is, therefore, a philosophy based on

experience alone and adhering to the realm of experience in obedience to

Hume's maxim, " 'Tis impossible to go beyond experience." Transcendental

philosophy, on the contrary, goes beyond experience, and considers that

philosophical speculation is concerned chiefly, if not solely, with those things

which lie beyond experience.

(4) Kant himself was convinced that, for the theoretical reason, the

transcendental reality, the thing-in-itself, is unknown and unknowable. Therefore,

he defined the task of philosophy to consist in the examination of knowledge for

the purpose of determining the a priori elements, in the systematic enumeration

of those elements, for forms, and the determination of the rules for their

legitimate application to the data of experience. Ultra-empirical reality, he taught,

is to be known only by the practical reason. Thus, his philosophy is critical

transcendentalism. Thus, too he left to his successors the task of bridging over

the chasm between the theoretical and the practical reason. This task they

accomplished in various ways, eliminating, transforming, or adapting the

transcendent reality outside us. the thing-in-itself, and establishing in this way

different transcendentalisms in place of the critical transcendentalism of Kant.

(5) Fiche introduced Egoistic Transcendentalism. The subject, he taught, or the

Ego, has a practical as well as a theoretical side. to develop its practical side

along the line of duty, obligation, and right, it is obliged to posit the non-Ego. In

this way, the thing-in-itself as opposed to the subject, is eliminated, because it is

a creation of the Ego, and, therefore all transcendental reality is contained in self.

I am I, the original identity of self with itself, is the expression of the highest

metaphysical truth.

(6) Schelling, addressing himself to the same task, developed Transcendental

Absolutism. He brought to the problems of philosophy a highly spiritual

imaginativeness and a scientific insight into nature which were lacking in Kant,

the critic of knowledge, and Fiche, the exponent of romantic personalize. He

taught that the transcendental reality is neither subject or object, but an Absolute

which is so indeterminate that it may be said to be neither nature nor spirit. Yet

the Absolute is, in a sense, potentially both the one and the other. For, from it,

by gravity, light and organization, is derived spirit, which slumbers in nature, but

reaches consciousness of self in the highest natural organization, man. There is

here a hint of development which was brought out explicitly by Hegel.

(7) Hegel introduced Idealistic Transcendentalism. He taught that reality is not

an unknowable thing in itself, nor the subject merely, nor an absolute of

indifference, but an absolute Idea, Spirit, or Concept (Begriff), whose essence is

development (das Werden), and which becomes in succession object and

subject, nature and spirit, being and essence, the soul, law, the state, art,

science, religion, and philosophy.

In all these various meanings there is preserved a generic resemblance to the

original signification of the term transcendentalism. The transcendentalists one

and all, dwell in the regions beyond experience, and, if they do not condemn

experience as untrustworthy, at least they value experience only in so far as it is

elevated, sublimated, and transformed by the application to it of transcendental

principles. The fundamental epistemological error of Kant, that whatever is

universal and necessary cannot come from experience, runs all through the

transcendentalist philosophy, and it is on epistemological grounds that the

transcendentalists are to be met. This was the stand taken in Catholic circles,

and there, with few exceptions, the doctrines of the transcendentalists met with a

hostile reception. The exceptions were Franz Baader (1765-1841), Johann

Frohschammer (1821-1893), and Anton Günther (1785-1863), who in their

attempt to "reconcile" Catholic dogma with modern philosophical opinion, were

influenced by the transcendentalists and overstepped the boundaries of

orthodoxy. It may without unfairness be laid to the charge of the German

transcendentalists that their disregard for experience and common sense is

largely accountable for the discredit into which metaphysics has fallen in recent

years.

New England transcendentalism, sometimes called the Concord School of

Philosophy, looks to William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) as its founder. Its

principal representatives are Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), Ralph Waldo

Emerson (1803-1882), Theodore Parker (1810-1860), Frederick Henry Hedge

(1805-890), George Ripley (1802-1880), and Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). It had

its inception in the foundation of the Transcendental Club in 1836. The chief

influences discernible in its literary output are German philosophy, French

sociology, and the reaction against the formalism of Its sociological and

economic theories were tested in the famous Brook Farm (1841), with which the

names just mentioned and those of several other distinguished Americans were

associated.

For the history of German transcendentalism see Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy, tr. Morris (New

York, 1892); Falckenberg, Hist. of Modern Philosophy, tr. Armstrong (New York, 1893); Turner, Hist.

of Philosophy (Boston, 1903); St=F6ckl, Gesch. der Phil. (Mainz, 1888). For New England

transcendentalism see Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England (New York, 1876);

Codman, Brook Farm (Boston, 1894).

William Turner

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XV

Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org