Transcendental philosophy

“ Such, in the better sense of the term, is the transcendental philosophy, or transcendentalism. Each of these words is also used in a bad sense, empiricism applying to that one-sided view of knowledge which neglects or loses sight of the truths or principles referred to above, and trusts to experience alone; transcendentalism, to the opposite extreme, which, in its deprecation of experience, loses sight of the relations which facts and phenomena sustain to principles, and hence to a kind of philosophy, or a use of language, which is vague, obscure, fantastic, or extravagant. ”

“ In the works on transcendental philosophy which have been published of late years, we find the words infinite, absolute, indeterminate, unconditioned, frequently repeated, and made to play a very prominent part in the explanation of the most recondite secrets which can be presented to the consideration of man. The words finite, relative, determinate, conditional, are easily combined with these; and from this combination they pretend that a ray of light will arise to dissipate the darkness of philosophical questions. ”

“ So far as the faculty of sense may contain representations a priori, which form the conditions under which objects are given, in so far it belongs to transcendental philosophy. The transcendental doctrine of sense must form the first part of our science of elements, because the conditions under which alone the objects of human knowledge are given must precede those under which they are thought. ”

“ If it would take the highest unity of the reason not simply in a transcendental sense, but exalt it to an actual object of knowledge, then it would become transcendent in that it applied the conceptions of the understanding to the knowledge of the unconditioned. From this transcending and false use of the categories, arises the transcendental appearance which decoys us beyond experience, by the delusive pretext of widening the domain of the pure understanding. It is the problem of the transcendental logic to discover this transcendental appearance. ”

“ That many persons, misled perhaps by the word Natural Philosophy, expect to find transcendental deductions from natural phenomena, such as, in different fragments, exist elsewhere, and will regard natural philosophy generally as a part of transcendental philosophy, whereas it forms a science altogether peculiar, altogether different from, and independent of, every other. ”

“ Common non-dialectical men have already this certainty as a result of the generous vital enthusiasm about the universe with which they are born. The peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is its sovereign contempt for merely vital functions like enthusiasm, and its pretension to turn our simple and immediate trusts and faiths into the form of logically mediated certainties, to question which would be absurd. But the whole basis on which Mr. ”

“ Second—That the two affirmations, I am and There are things outside of me, which in the ordinary consciousness run together, 162are, in the former, separated and the one placed before the other, with a view to demonstrate as a fact their identity, and that immediate connection which in the other is only felt. By the act of this separation, when it is complete, the philosopher transports himself to the transcendental point of view, which is by no means a natural, but an artificial one. ”

“ Pure representation, entirely apart from sensation, in a transcendental signification, forms the pure intuition of the mind, existing in it as a mere form of sensibility. Transcendental æsthetic is the science of all the principles of sensibility. But transcendental logic is the science of the principles of pure thought. In studying the former we shall find that there are two pure forms of sensuous intuition, namely, space and time.
Are space and time actual entities? Or are they only relations of things? Space is simply the form of all the phenomena of external senses ”

“ Both Being and Consciousness, however, are immediately known to us, as also the relation existing between them. By this Transcendental Synthesis he proposed to reconcile Realism and Idealism, and to destroy the traditional difficulty between transcendental, or pure, thought and “things in themselves.” ”

“ Moreover, what is called nowadays analysis of human nature, belongs in reality to transcendental thought. 'Transcendent' is defined as designating that which lies beyond the bounds of all possible experience. So far as we know, it is beyond those bounds to enter into the intelligence of our neighbour, subjectively, to identify ourselves with him and to see and understand the world with his eyes and mind. ”

“ If the transcendentalists will really create a new, a transcendental state, then they must create a something beyond that; they must, in their ideal man, present a more beautiful figure than that which has already been presented on earth and for earth—the powerful, and, at the same time, humble son of heaven and earth, uniting both in one new creation. ”

“ The trouble with transcendentalists, it seems to us, originates in their method of starting with cognition, with the synthetic unity of apperception, with the forms of concepts. Experience means to them the sense-element of sensation, the contents of concepts without their form. They start with a dualism. When they have completed their system of transcendental forms, they find it hard to explain how to change their rigid laws into the constant flux of reality as presented to us by experience. Should the philosopher not rather start from the function of cognising, which in itself is a unity? ”

“ Shall we say, then, that Transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish. Nature is transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet takes no thought for the morrow. ”

“ Now, transcendental thinking is distinguished, moreover, from ordinary thinking in this: that whereas ordinary thinking is fixed, and, as it were, carried by something, which is separated and determined already in itself, transcendental thinking, on the contrary, has nothing for its object but itself, and hence, is fixed, separated, divided and determined only through itself. ”

“ So long as the object of our rational conceptions is the totality of conditions in the world of phenomena, and the satisfaction, from this source, of the requirements of reason, so long are our ideas transcendental and cosmological. But when we set the unconditioned- which is the aim of all our inquiries—in a sphere which lies out of the world of sense and possible experience, our ideas become transcendent. ”

“ In the transcendental aesthetic we proved that everything intuited in space and time, all objects of a possible experience, are nothing but phenomena, that is, mere representations; and that these, as presented to us—as extended bodies, or as series of changes—have no self-subsistent existence apart from human thought. This doctrine I call Transcendental Idealism.* The realist in the transcendental sense regards these modifications of our sensibility, these mere representations, as things subsisting in themselves. ”

“ The extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man's thinking have given vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, to that extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought, is popularly called at the present day Transcendental. ”

“ Transcendental idealism, of course, insists that its ideal world makes this difference, that facts exist. We owe it to the Absolute that we have a world of fact at all. “A world” of fact!—that exactly is the trouble. An entire world is the smallest unit with which the Absolute can work, whereas to our finite minds work for the better ought to be done within this world, setting in at single points. ”

“ I have already pointed out in View Two that the Transcendental Personality, being Spiritual, and therefore akin to the Great Reality, may be said to have no free-will of itself. Its will or influence must always be working towards perfection in the form "Let Thy Will, which is also my will, be done"; the efficacy of its influence with the Great Reality depends on its growth or nourishment by the knowledge of the Good, Beautiful, and True ever bringing it more and more nearly into perfect touch or sympathy with the All-loving. ”

“ The will is the effective cause, the living principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. The will is in itself a constituent part of the transcendental world. By my free determination I change and set in motion something in this transcendental world, and my energy gives birth to an effect that is new, permanent, and imperishable. ”

“ In one sense the power to hold any transcendental doctrine shows the soul to be still awake and therefore capable of achieving true transcendental doctrine, while those who lose the sense of the supernatural will be more difficult of approach. ”

“ But the conception of transcendence is capable of taking two forms. It may be that of a God who passes beyond all the classes into which sensible phenomena are divisible, by virtue of His being pure Mind, cognizable only by mind ”

“ It taught that nature was an open book of the Lord in which he who runs may read a divine message; and in contrast with eighteenth-century philosophy (which had described man as a creature of the senses, born with a blank mind, and learning only by experience) , it emphasized the divinity of man's nature, his inborn ideas of right and wrong, his instinct of God, his passion for immortality,—in a word, his higher knowledge which transcends the knowledge gained from the senses, and which is summarized in the word "Transcendentalism." ”

“ The farther margin of the subliminal field being unknown, it can be treated as by Transcendental Idealism, as an Absolute mind with a part of which we coalesce, or by Christian theology, as a distinct deity acting on us. ”

“ To be a transcendentalist is after all to be only a sensible, unprejudiced man, open to conviction at all times, and spiritually-minded. I can well understand that, when you condemn transcendentalism, you object not to the principle, but to the practice, in the superlative degree, of that principle. Transcendentalism is but an abstract mode of considering morals, philosophy, religion ”

“ There are few documents, I think, which show with an equal impressiveness how startlingly direct and immediate can be and is the application of such, apparently, purely transcendental, serene contemplations and affections to the struggling, clamorous world of our human passions, circumstances, difficulties, and duties: and how only that transcendence and this immanence, taken and working thus together, give to the soul a height without inflation, and a concrete particularity without pettiness. ”

“ Metaphysicians praise the transcendental, and carefully avoid it. Nietzsche hated metaphysics, he praised the earth—bleib nur der Erde treu, O meine Bruder—and always lived in the realm of the transcendental. ”

“ And thus naturalism in its last stages may sometimes be quite devout, and may assure us that it is compelled [pg 022] to deny only the transcendental and not the immanent God, the Divine being enthroned above the world, but not the living God dwelling within it. ”

“ If these conceptions overstep experience, their employment is termed transcendent, a word which must be distinguished from transcendental, the latter being limited to the immanent use, that is, to experience. ”

“ The one ultimate reality, God, appears to us as the material world; the other ultimate realities, the Transcendental Egos, appear as our present phenomenal selves. The cosmos of our experience is a stress or interaction between God and the Egos. God is finite, one among the Many, their supreme ruler and aim, and not the One underlying the Many. As the Egos are ultimate realities, God cannot annihilate them; the most that can be done is to bring them into harmony with the Divine Will. The world-process is designed to bring this about. ”

“ Although, as we have said, there is no pure Transcendentalist, yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them, at least in our creed, all authority over our experience, has deeply colored the conversation and poetry of the present day; and the history of genius and of religion in these times, though impure, and as yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, will be the history of this tendency. ”

“ Not till we know the high things shall we know how lowly they are. Meanwhile, the modern superior transcendentalist will find the facts of eternity incredible because they are so solid; he will not recognise heaven because it is so like the earth. ”

“ It arises from the free act of the subject, which enters the time-process as a discipline. "The self-conscious Ego is a projection of the transcendental subject, and resembles it." "We should regard this earthly existence as a transitory phenomenal form in correspondence with our transcendental interest." "Conscience is transcendental nature." ”

“ The feeling of extension and duration must hence be transcendental in man, for it is entirely independent of reason. Reality itself—Das Ding an sich—is inconceivable by reason and is transcendental. The very idea of a thing is transcendental and eternal. ”

“ TRANSCENDENTAL. Synonyms:
Intuitive truths are those which are in the mind independently of all experience, not being derived from experience nor limited by it, as that the whole is greater than a part, or that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. All intuitive truths or beliefs are transcendental. But transcendental is a wider term than intuitive, including all within the limits of thought that is not derived from experience, as the ideas of space and time. "Being is transcendental.... ”