transcendantales

Transcendantales, also known as transcendentals, are a category of universal predicates that medieval philosophers argued can be predicated of every being in some sense, across all Aristotelian categories such as substance, quantity, and quality. The term comes from Latin transcendentalis, meaning going beyond or extending across. The concept was developed within the Scholastic tradition to capture features that universalize our talk about reality, beyond the limits of any single category.

The traditional core of transcendentals can be summarized by four terms: being (ens), unity (unitas), truth (verum), and goodness (bonum). These are considered fundamental ways in which things can be otherwise identified or evaluated, regardless of their particular kind. Some philosophers and texts also list additional transcendentals, such as beauty (pulchrum), or discuss other related notions like adequacy or perfection, but the fourfold set remains the most widely cited core. The precise interpretation of each transcendental can vary by author, especially regarding whether they are predicates of things in general or of being itself.

In scholastic logic and metaphysics, transcendentals are used to illuminate how we know and describe reality. They are not simply synonyms for categories; rather, they are cross-cutting predicates that apply across different kinds of beings and help to unify diverse fields of inquiry. They also relate to ontology and epistemology by highlighting the basic ways in which beings can exhibit unity, truth, and goodness as part of their being.

Today, transcendentals are primarily studied as historical and philosophical concepts within the study of medieval philosophy and the history of logic, though their influence persists in discussions of universal predicates and foundational questions about being.