Word.ws English Dictionary

transcendental ego

transcendental ego noun: the conscious self which is the unifying subject of a person's experiences and which cannot itself be experienced as an object, understood by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) as knowable only by inference, and understood by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) as pure consciousness.

Noun (1)

transcendental ego (plural transcendental egos)

  1. The conscious self which is the unifying subject of a person's experiences and which cannot itself be experienced as an object, understood by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) as knowable only by inference, and understood by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) as pure consciousness.
    • If, however, the self be taken to mean, not an object existing among other objects, but the subject logically implied in all knowledge, the "Transcendental Ego" which we never can know as an object, and which therefore we never can "get behind," that may be allowed to be the ultimate reality.1892, David G. Ritchie, “What is Reality?”, in The Philosophical Review, volume 1, number 3, page 280
    • On the basis of such a theory, it becomes legitimate to assert that every human being "contains" a transcendental Ego.1957, Aron Gurwitsch, “The Last Work of Edmund Husserl”, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, volume 17, number 3, page 386

Noun (2) capitalized: Transcendental Ego

Transcendental Ego (plural Transcendental Egos)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of transcendental ego.

Noun (3) capitalized: transcendental Ego

transcendental Ego (plural transcendental Egos)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of transcendental ego.

Synonyms of transcendental ego

Forms of transcendental ego

pluraltranscendental egos
alternative formtranscendental Ego
alternative formTranscendental Ego
pluralTranscendental Egos
pluraltranscendental Egos

Questions about transcendental ego

What does transcendental ego mean?
Transcendental ego means the conscious self which is the unifying subject of a person's experiences and which cannot itself be experienced as an object, understood by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) as knowable only by inference, and understood by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) as pure consciousness.
What part of speech is transcendental ego?
Transcendental ego is a noun.
What is the plural of transcendental ego?
The plural of transcendental ego is transcendental egos.

Words near transcendental ego in the dictionary

  1. transcendency
  2. transcendent
  3. transcendental
  4. transcendental critique
  5. transcendental critiques
  6. transcendental ego
  7. transcendental egos
  8. transcendental function
  9. transcendental functions
  10. transcendental idealism
  11. transcendental idealisms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: transcendental ego (page history and authors); Transcendental Ego (page history and authors); transcendental Ego (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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