| 释义 |
transcendent, a. and n.|trɑːnˈsɛndənt, træn-|
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’.
1598Florio, Trascendente, transcending, transcendent. 1611Cotgr., Transcendant, transcendant, surmounting, surpassing, exceeding. 1611Speed Hist. Gt. Brit. ix. ii. §64 The Popes transcendent pleasure and power, being the strongest part of the Dukes title to the Crown. a1637B. 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? 1649Milton Eikon. 10 That transcendent Apostle Saint Paul. 1725Pope Odyss. vi. 128 Nausicaa..shone transcendent o'er the beauteous train. 1754Richardson Grandison (1781) III. xxviii. 307 Such transcendant goodness of heart. 1807Crabbe Par. Reg. i. 783 His own transcendant genius found the rest. 1865Seeley Ecce Homo v. (ed. 8) 48 A person of altogether transcendant greatness. 1878Gladstone Prim. Homer vi. §13. 73 Apollo is less transcendent in intellect [than Athenè].
†b. With above, to: greatly superior to. Obs.
1634Rainbow Labour (1635) 35 Their clothings being by some degrees transcendant to needle worke even wrought with gold. 1634Habington Castara (Arb.) 16 If worth be not transcendant above the title. 1678Cudworth Intell. Syst. i. iv. §16. 286 Julian the Emperor..acknowledged besides the Sun, another Incorporeal Deity, transcendent to it. 1713C'tess of Winchilsea Misc. Poems 202 If a fluent Vein be shown That's transcendent to our own.
†2. Of language: Elevated above ordinary language, lofty. Obs.
1631Gouge God's Arrows iii. §15. 212 Those other high transcendent hyperbolicall phrases of the Prophet Isay. a1653― 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.
1624Gataker Transubst. 146 These are such transcendent subtilties, if not absurdities, as any metaphysics will afford. 1635D. Person Varieties i. 3 Metaphysicks..medleth with things transcendent and supernaturall. 1646Bp. 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 which by their universal application were considered to transcend the Aristotelian categories or predicaments. See B. 1 a.
[c1300Duns 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. ]1706Phillips (ed. Kersey), Transcendent,..in Logick, surpassing the Predicaments. 1872Latham 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.)
1803Edin. Rev. I. 258 Philosophy..is transcendent when..it believes that the objects of our senses exist in a manner really known to us. 1815Coleridge Biog. Lit. i. xii. (1870) 117 Those flights of lawless speculation, which, abandoned by all distinct consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes of our intellectual faculties, are justly condemned, as transcendent. 1842Brande Dict. Sc., etc., s.v. Transendental, 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. 1877E. 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. 1881R. 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.
1877D. 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. 1907Illingworth 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. 1911R. 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.
1902Encycl. Brit. XXXI. 287/2 Hermite first completely proved the transcendent character of e [see E (the letter) 5 a].
B. n. [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.
[c1300Duns 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.] 1581W. Fulke in Confer. iii. (1584) Y iij b, It is a transcendent, which is in all predicaments. 1640G. Watts tr. 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. 1652Gaule Magastrom. 207 God is a transcendent, and is not under, nor yet within, the predicament of any part of the whole order of nature. 1697tr. 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.
1591G. 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. 1593G. 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. 1608Bp. J. King Serm. 5 Nov. 23 Both were transcendents not to be placed in the classes or rankes of hitherto experienced or practised wickednesse. 1642Fuller Holy & Prof. St. iii. xxiii. 218 Fame falls most short in those Transcendents, which are above her Predicaments; as in Solomons wisdome. 1655Fuller 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.
c1810Coleridge in Lit. Rem. (1838) III. 221 Omnify the disputed point into a transcendant, and you may defy the opponent to lay hold of it. 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. 1837–8Sir 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.
1593G. Harvey Pierce's Super. 18 Were..his lines such transcendentes, as his thoughtes..what an egregious Aretine should we shortly haue. 1612W. Sclater Serm. 8, I am loth to make them transcendents; yet such, sure, is their authoritie on earth supra seriem. 1613Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 175 The Cabalist as a super subtile transcendent, mounteth with all his industrie..from this sensible World unto that other intellectuall. 1679V. 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.
1613Purchas Pilgrimage i. ii. 6 A Paradise, faire, shining, delightsome,..a meere transcendent, which eye hath not seene. 1658Cokaine Trappolin iii. ii, Your matchless eyes Transcendents of the brightest lightest stars.
†b. A transcendent or pre-eminent quality. Obs.
1657–83Evelyn 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.
1602Willis Stenogr. 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.
1691W. 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.
1809Ivory in Phil. Trans. XCIX. 368 They belong to the class of elliptical transcendants. 1816tr. Lacroix's Diff. & Int. Calculus 24 Those functions..not comprehended in the enumeration made in No. 14, are called transcendents. 1887R. 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. |