a. and sb. Also -ant. [ad. L. transcendent-em, pr. pple. of transcend-ĕre to TRANSCEND. For the spelling with -ant cf. F. transcendant (14–15th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), also ascendant, descendant.]
A. adj.
1. Surpassing or excelling others of its kind; going beyond the ordinary limits; pre-eminent; superior or supreme; extraordinary. Also, loosely, Eminently great or good; cf. ‘excellent ‘.
1598. Florio, Trascendente, transcending, transcendent.
1611. Cotgr., Transcendant, transcendant, surmounting, surpassing, exceeding.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. ii. § 64. The Popes transcendent pleasure and power, being the strongest part of the Dukes title to the Crown.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Goodwife’s Ale, in Athenæum, 1 Oct. (1904). When shall we meete agayne, and have a tast, Of that transcendant Ale we dranke of last?
1649. Milton, Eikon., 10. That transcendent Apostle Saint Paul.
1725. Pope, Odyss., VI. 128. Nausicaa … shone transcendent o’er the beauteous train.
1754. Richardson, Grandison (1781), III. xxviii. 307. Such transcendant goodness of heart.
1807. Crabbe, Par. Reg., I. 783. His own transcendant genius found the rest.
1865. Seeley, Ecce Homo, v. (ed. 8), 48. A person of altogether transcendant greatness.
1878. Gladstone, Prim. Homer, vi. § 13. 73. Apollo is less transcendent in intellect [than Athenè].
† b. With above, to: greatly superior to. Obs.
1634. Rainbow, Labour (1635), 35. Their clothings being by some degrees transcendant to needle worke even wrought with gold.
1634. Habington, Castara (Arb.), 16. If worth be not transcendant above the title.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iv. § 16. 286. Julian the Emperor … acknowledged besides the Sun, another Incorporeal Deity, transcendent to it.
1713. C’tess Winchelsea, Misc. Poems, 202. If a fluent Vein be shown That’s transcendent to our own.
† 2. Of language: Elevated above ordinary language, lofty. Obs.
1631. Gouge, God’s Arrows, III. § 15. 212. Those other high transcendent hyperbolicall phrases of the Prophet Isay: Ibid. (a. 1653), Comm. Heb. i. 5 (1655), 43. In this sense this high transcendent prophesie (Isa. ix. 6, 7) is to be taken.
† 3. Of an idea or conception: Transcending comprehension; hence, obscure or abstruse. Cf. METAPHYSICAL 1 b. Obs.
1624. Gataker, Transubst., 146. These are such transcendent subtilties, if not absurdities, as any metaphysics will afford.
1635. Person, Varieties, I. 3. Metaphysicks … medleth with things transcendent and supernaturall.
1646. Bp. Maxwell, Burden Issachar, 31. I confesse, this Divinitie is so transcendent and Metaphysicall, that it exceeds my capacitie.
4. Philos. a. Applied by the Schoolmen to predicates that by their universal application were considered to transcend the Aristotelian categories or predicaments. See B. 1 a.
[c. 1300. Duns Scotus, Rep. Par. in Sent., I. viii. v. § 13. Praedicata … quae dicuntur de Deo … sunt praedicata transcendentia … quidquid convenit enti antequam descendat in genera [i.e., the categories] est transcendens.]
1705. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Transcendent,… in Logick, surpassing the Predicaments.
1872. Latham, Eng. Dict., s.v. Transcendental, Transcendent is used by the scholastics and moderns, as opposed to immanent—meaning transcending the categories.
b. By Kant applied to that which transcends his own list of categories (explained as a priori conceptions of the understanding, which it necessarily employs in ordering its experience, but which have no validity outside of experience); hence, transcending or altogether outside experience; not an object of possible experience; unrealizable in human experience. (Distinguished by him from TRANSCENDENTAL 2 b.)
1803. Edin. Rev., I. 258. Philosophy … is transcendent when … it believes that the objects of our senses exist in a manner really known to us.
1815. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., I. xii. (1870), 117. Those fights of lawless speculation, which, abandoned by all distinct consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes of our intellectual faculties, are justly condemned, as transcendent.
1842. Brande, Dict. Sc., etc., s.v. Transcendental, Kant … draws a distinction between the transcendental and the transcendent.… The transcendent … is that which regards those principles as objectively real to which Kant assigns only a subjective or formal reality, and consequently is by him regarded as beyond the limits of human reason altogether.
1877. E. Caird, Philos. Kant, II. x. 422. From the Kantian point of view both the question and the answer are transcendent. For they both involve the doctrine that the world is in space,… apart from its being known as such. Ibid., xiv. 523. And this synthesis is transcendent, i. e. it is a synthesis which cannot be represented as a phenomenon, or verified in sensuous experience.
1881. R. Adamson, Fichte, v. 112, note. For any question or theorem which might pass beyond possible experience, Kant reserved the term transcendent.
5. Theol. Of the Deity: In His being, exalted above and distinct from the universe; having transcendence. Distinguished from IMMANENT 1.
Originally often connoting the denial of Divine action or interference in mundane affairs.
1877. D. Patrick, in Encycl. Brit., VII. 36/1. (Deism) Shaftesbury vigorously protests against the notion of a wholly transcendent God. Morgan more than once expresses a theory that would now be pronounced one of immanence.
1907. Illingworth, Doctr. Trinity, x. 194. To think of Him [God], in modern phrase, as transcendent, as above and beyond all relative and finite existence. Ibid., 195. It is theoretically possible … to conceive of God as simply transcendent, or simply immanent in the world.
1911. R. Mackintosh, in Encycl. Brit., XXVI. 744/1. (Theism) God was apt to be thought of [in 18th c.] as purely transcendent, not immanent in the world.
6. Math. = TRANSCENDENTAL 4.
1902. Encycl. Brit., XXXI. 287/2. Hermite first completely proved the transcendent character of e [see E (the letter) 5 a].
B. sb. [the adj. used absol.]
1. Philos. † a. A predicate that transcends, or cannot be classed under, any of the Aristotelian categories or predicaments. Obs.
Aristotle taught (Metaph., x. 2) that being and unity were neither categories, nor fell under any one category, but could be predicated in all the categories; in Eth. Nic. he says the like of goodness. Such predicates came to be called by the Schoolmen transcendentia, ‘transcendents,’ as transcending the limits of the categories. Their enumeration as six, Being, Thing, Something, One, True, Good (found first in a treatise attributed to Thomas Aquinas, but thought by Prantl (Gesch. der Logik, III. 245) to be subsequent to Duns Scotus), was in regular use down to the time of Kant.
[c. 1300. Duns Scotus, Op. Oxon. in Sent., I. viii. iii. § 19. Transcendens quodcunque nullum habet genus sub quo contineatur, sed quod ipsum sit commune ad multa inferiora.
13[?]. in Thomas Aquinas, Opusc., XLII. ii. (1490), K viij/2. Sunt autem sex transcendentia: videlicet ens, res, aliquid, vnum, verum, bonum.]
1581. W. Fulke, in Confer., III. (1584), Y iij b. It is a transcendent, which is in all predicaments.
1640. G. Watts, trans. Bacon’s Adv. Learn., III. iv. 143. All Relative and Adventive condicions and Characters of Essences, which we have named Transcendents; as Multitude, Paucity, Identity, Diversity, Possible, Impossible, and such like.
1652. Gaule, Magastrom., 207. God is a transcendent, and is not under, nor yet within the predicament of any part of the whole order of nature.
1697. trans. Burgersdicius his Logic, I. iii. 6. Transcendents, as, Being, Thing, One, True, Good, which by their Community exceed all the degrees of Categories.
b. transf. A person or thing that transcends classification.
1591. G. Fletcher, Russe Commw. (Hakl. Soc.), 37. In this number the lorde Borris … is not to be reckoned, that is like a transendent,… being the emperours brother in law.
1593. G. Harvey, New Letter, Wks. (Grosart), I. 267. Hope is a Transcendent, and will not easily be imprisoned, or impounded in any Predicament of auncient or moderne Perfection.
1608. Bp. J. King, Serm., 5 Nov., 23. Both were transcendents not to be placed in the classes or rankes of hitherto experienced or practised wickednesse.
1642. Fuller, Holy & Prof. St., III. xxiii. 218. Fame falls most short in those Transcendents, which are above her Predicaments; as in Solomons wisdome.
1655. Fuller, Ch. Hist., VII. i. § 37. Here I must set John Dudley Earl of Warwick (as a Transcendent) in a form by himself, being a competent Lawyer (Son to a Judge), known Soldier, and able States man, and acting against the Protector, to all these his capacities.
c. According to the Kantian philosophy: That which is altogether beyond the bounds of human cognition and thought. See A. 4 b.
c. 1810. Coleridge, in Lit. Rem. (1838), III. 221. Omnify the disputed point into a transcendant, and you may defy the opponent to lay hold of it. Ibid. (1825), Aids Refl. (1848), I. 260. Let X signify a transcendant, that is, a cause beyond our comprehension, and not within the sphere of sensible experience.
1837–8. Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, xi. (1866), I. 199. The term transcendent,… he [Kant] applied to all pretended knowledge that transcended experience, and was not given in an original principle of the mind.
† 2. One who or that which transcends or rises high above the ordinary rank of persons or things; a person or thing of great eminence. Obs.
1593. G. Harvey, Pierce’s Super., 18. Were … his lines such transcendentes, as his thoughtes … what an egregious Aretine should we shortly haue.
1612. W. Sclater, Serm., 8. I am loth to make them transcendents; yet such, sure, is their authoritie on earth supra seriem.
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage (1614), 175. The Cabalist as a super subtile transcendent, mounteth with all his industrie … from this sensible World unto that other intellectuall.
1679. V. Alsop, Melius Inquir., I. i. 73. ‘The command of a Superior will hallow an erroneous action,’ as a Transcendent in our Church speaks.
† 3. That which transcends, surpasses, or excels something else, or things generally. rare.
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, I. ii. 6. A Paradise, faire, shining, delightsome,… a meere transcendent, which eye hath not seene.
1658. Cokaine, Trappolin, III. ii. Your matchless eyes Transcendents of the brightest lightest stars.
† b. A transcendent or pre-eminent quality. Obs.
1657–83. Evelyn, Hist. Relig. (1850), I. 76. These are the transcendents and pre-eminences which this admirable heathen attributes to mankind.
† 4. A 2- or 3-line capital letter such as those put at the beginning of books or chapters. Obs. rare.
1602. Willis, Stenographie, A iv b. A Transcendent, is a great Character, which extendeth it selfe further then the distance betweene the lines.
† 5. The transcendent: the ascendancy, the superiority; = ASCENDANT B. 3. Obs. rare.
1691. W. Nicholls, Answ. Naked Gospel, Pref. C j. His Confidence has generally the transcendent of his Sincerity, which is the common fate of all Hereticks.
6. Math. A transcendental expression or function; a non-algebraical function; e.g., log x, sin x, ax. See TRANSCENDENTAL a. 4.
1809. Ivory, in Phil. Trans., XCIX. 368. They belong to the class of elliptical transcendants.
1816. trans. Lacroix’s Diff. & Int. Calculus, 24. Those functions … not comprehended in the enumeration made in No. 14, are called transcendents.
1887. R. A. Roberts, Int. Calculus, I. 3. We might … deduce their properties as we do in the case of the elliptic functions and the higher transcendents.
