Transcendence

Transcendence (Transzendenz) See also immanence, transcendental idealism 'Transcendence' means literally 'to climb beyond', 'to ascend beyond', 'to step over', 'to step across', to 'surmount', 'to exceed'. The term 'transcendence' and its counterpart 'immanence' is taken over by Husserl from modern philosophy and specifically Kant. Husserl introduces 'term in Idea of Phenomenology (1907) and discussion of the various forms of transcendence plays a central role in Ideas I (1907). It is also discussed in Cartesian Meditations.. Husserl speaks of 'transcendence' in several senses. There is the natural attitude assumption that the objects of knowledge transcend the subject. Indeed, Husserl says that '"transcendence" is part of the intrinsic sense of anything worldly' (CM § 11) Any object given in profiles transcends the immanent flow of consciousness. Husserl speaks of one sense of transcendence as the assumption that the object of knowledge transcends the act of knowing and is not really contained in the act. Husserl criticizes the traditional epistemologica! problem of how the mind transcends itself to gain knowledge of external objects (a problem expressed by Kant in his Letter to Markus Herz of 1772) as nonsensical. Husserl offers a new phenomenological account of transcendence - 'transcendence in immanence' (CM § 47). According to Husserl, especially in Ideas I, there are several entities that are said to 'transcend', e.g. the physical thing, the ego, the consciousness of the other, even God. Thus, the 'physical thing is said to be, in itself, unqualifiedly transcendent' (Ideas I § 42, p. 90; Hua 111/1: 77), i.e. it does not form an immanent part of the flow of the consciousness that apprehends that object. Similarly the ego as subject pole is not an immanent part of the object Universals and essences are also ideal unities that transcend consciousness (Ideas I § 59). God as a 'transcendence' is explicitly excluded by the phenomenological reduction (Ideas I § 58). The ego is said to be a 'transcendence in immanence'. According to Husserl's transcendental idealism, 'transcendence' in every form is an immanent characteristic, constituted within the ego. Every imaginable sense, every imaginable being, whether the latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls within the domain of transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity that constitutes sense and being' (CM § 41, p. 81).