transcendentals

Noun

transcendental (plural transcendentals)

1. A thing which is transcendental (all adjective senses).
   • The Learning of this People is very defective, conſiſting only in Morality, Hiſtory, Poetry, and Mathematicks, vvherein they muſt be allovved to excel. […] And as to Ideas, Entities, Abſtraction and Tranſcendentals, I could never drive the leaſt Conception into their Heads.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The Author’s Love of His Country. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […]...
   1. (Christian, in plural, metaphysics, philosophy (specifically Platonism)) Any one of the transcendental properties of being, especially beauty, goodness, and truth—which are respectively the ideals of art, religion, and science, and thus the principal subjects of the study of aesthetics, ethics, and logic.
      • In another sense, God is the creator of a world that might have some transcendental properties common to all things, for instance as expressed in the theory of determinateness. […] In deference to Christian usage we can say that the transcendentals constitute the Logos within which everything has...2002, Robert C[ummings] Neville, “The Symbols of Divine Action”, in Religion in Late Modernity, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 72
   2. An element of an extension field, an extension field, a function, or a number which is not algebraic.
2. (obsolete) Synonym of transcendentalist (“one who believes in transcendentalism; a philosopher who asserts that true knowledge is obtained by faculties of the mind that transcend sensory experience”).

   Synonyms:

   transcendentalist

See all 13 meanings of transcendental