To Supertranscendentality and Back Again

To those who are not scholastic thinkers by training or bent, the notion of a “transcendental notion” likely seems to be something quite nebulous. In fact, the word itself bears a signification that can be taken in quite different ways. For some, it evokes the idea of being completely beyond sensible or articulable experience. Along these lines, one likely thinks of the “transcendentalism” of 19^th century romantic reactions to rationalism. Or, someone who has training in the history of philosophy will be reminded of the particular epistemological meaning of the expression when applied to the “transcendental idealism” of Kant in his particular views concerning our understanding of the phenomena of experience. And for those who have some exposure to scholastic thought, mention of “the transcendentals” can begin a kind of rhapsody regarding “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” although, as I sometimes joke, I should like them to finish their paeans by mentioning: “Being, the One, the Thing, and the Something.” I’m being somewhat lighthearted, but these brief observations point out some of the flexibility in the use of the term “transcendental.”

Although a kind of general teaching regarding transcendentals as general modes of being developed in the 13^th century, we must take great care not to foist upon thinkers of that era—including Thomas Aquinas—a settled vocabulary regarding trascendentalia.¹ But, there is a kind of general ground out of which later theories of “the transcendentals” would grow. Very generally speaking, the term designates how certain notions seem to “straddle” different domains of being. For example, we can speak of being and unity whenever we speak about substances, qualities, relations, etc. In other words: being and unity transcend the particular categories that divide up the Aristotelian account of reality. Another quotidian example: when we speak about somebody’s growth in a given ability, we often use a kind of quantitative schema for what we assert: William has grown much more in maturity than his classmates. Or: although intelligence is really a quality of soul, we can nonetheless provide some relevant understanding of this or that person’s intelligence by means of an IQ test, assigning a quantitative value to a qualitative reality. And yet, neither maturity, nor intelligence, are quantities. Thus, scholastics came to refer to the use of quantitative terms in relation to non-quantities as being a kind of “transcendental quantity.”² As another kind of transcendental, later scholasticism developed a notion of “disjunctive transcendentals,” such as actual and potential, necessary and contingent, etc., such that every being would need to be one of the two disjuncts. Finally, there is a more “transcendent” use of the expression “transcendental.”³ This is perhaps the one that is most often considered: some notions apply both to created and uncreated being,⁴ transcending one particular domain of being. Thus, man, angel, and God are all intelligent, good, etc., though with infinite difference. This final usage is perhaps less exact.

However, I’m not looking here to provide a complete account of the transcendentals and the history of their development. For that, the work of Jan Aertsen represents a detailed resource for the interested reader.⁵ I’m more interested in a rather strange moment in the history of scholastic thought, when certain thinkers began to speak about “supertranscendentals.” I must admit, I feel some of the same revulsion as did Aertsen faced with the Baroque notion: “The idea of a ‘Supertranscendental’ seems rather grotesque: Why and how should the most common concepts be transcended once again?”⁶ The notion of supertranscendentality grew out of the realization that there are some notions—for example, knowability—that span the metaphysical domains that scholastic metaphysics denominated as ens reale and ens rationis. Because these kinds of notions spanned what was considered “real” and what was in some way “not-real” (negations, privations, and rationate relations, including chimerical notions like “goat-stags” or, to use a better example, square-circles), this broader transcendentality—over the “real” and the “not-real”—came to be called “supertranscendental.”⁷

Despite the somewhat questionable “super” in “supertranscendental,” this issue concerning the odd metaphysical status of some beings is bound to arise when philosophical speculation runs up against the edge of its claims regarding what belongs to the “really real.” Thus, as Doyle himself noted, something similar can be found in the “ontology” offered by Stoicism. Faced with their general materialism, Stoic thought came to acknowledge several “incorporeals” that are required in order to maintain the rest of their general ontology: time, void, place, and “things said” (lekta).⁸ The final are rather mysterious, and they seem to span between physical beings and cognition of those beings.⁹ For this reason, John Doyle was likely correct in seeing a connection between this particular issue in Stoic thought and the later Baroque discussions about the super transcendentals, for—in a way that was akin to supertranscendentality spanning ens rationis and ens reale—the Stoic lekta also seemed to be on, to use Doyle’s own expression, “the borders of being and knowing.”¹⁰

In the context of scholasticism, I believe that the issue of “supertranscendentality” arises at least in part because of an overly cramped notion of ens rationis, as comprising solelyprivations (blindness in a human subject), negations (non-rational said of a tree), and rationate relations or relationes rationis formed by the mind, with more or less foundation in what we know about “hard and fast” reality, so-called ens reale. However, if one considers the particular domain of rationate relations that make up logic—namely “second intentional relations”—it is clear that some entia rationis have a great deal of metaphysical solidity, sufficing to provide grounding for an entire science, namely the scientific art of logic.¹¹ Even if such “logical relations”¹² are not as mind-independently real as the plants, animals, and other realities that we reason about day-in and day-out, nonetheless, they have some being and truthful intelligibility. It seems quite wrongheaded, therefore, to hold that entia rationis only have being through a kind of extrinsic denomination in relation to “real being”—or, to put it another way, to hold that the analogy between ens rationis and ens reale is only one of “attribution.”

Such was the position of Cajetan,¹³ and on the basis of the work of Fr. Philip-Neri Reese, I venture to say it is the main line of later Thomists as well.¹⁴ For this reason alone, I would be hesitant to contest the point if it weren’t for the fact that a relatively great Thomist pedagogue, Dom Joseph Gredt (a Benedictine manualist expositing a line of Thomism broadly in line with John of St. Thomas) fascinatingly proposed that being itself is supertranscendental. He took only one step down this path, but it seems to my eyes to be enough to show that an honest Thomism, within the tradition of the Thomist school, can suitably build upon the insight of the supertranscendentality of the Jesuits so dear to John Doyle (for it is based on the correct insight that there must be notions that span the domains of ens reale and ens rationis), while correcting Doyle’s figures (as well as non-supertranscendentalists such as Suárez, Cajetan, and others) by asserting a truly and properly proportional analogy between the domains of cognition-independent and cognition-dependent being (because the latter is more than a mere “shadow of being”).

Thus, Gredt remarks:

Being is a transcendental concept,¹⁵ nay one that is supertranscendental. Being is transcendental inasmuch as it is said of every real being: of real created (i.e., predicamental) being and of uncreated being (i.e., God).¹⁶ Being is supertranscendental insofar as it is said of real being and cognition dependent being, that is fabricated being [de ente rationes (de ente ficto)].

Therefore, being is an analogous concept which is said of its inferiors by way of an analogy of proper proportionality, virtually containing the analogy of attribution. Just as predicamental being is analogous to its inferiors by way of an analogy of proper proportionality (virtually containing an analogy of attribution), so too is transcendental being, inasmuch as it is said of God and creatures and of complete being and partial being.¹⁷ And supertranscendental being, which is said of real being and cognition-dependent being, is analogous in the same way in relation to all of its inferiors…. Likewise [as is the case for predicamental and transcendental being,] just as real being is said to exist, so too is cognition dependent being said to exist.¹⁸

In other words, in the relationship between ens rationis and ens reale we find the very structure of the analogy of proper proportionality. And this seems to make quite good sense, given the nature of the relationship between a non-generic analogue¹⁹ and its various analogates in analogies of proper proportionality. In such analogies, dissimilarity is greater than similarity.²⁰ Such as the case here: being as “mind-independent” or ens naturae; being as mind-dependent or ens rationis.²¹ But the latter is not so different that we here have a case of complete contradiction or negation. There remains some commonality, even if being must be affirmed and denied in some way for each of the analogates.²²

Therefore, insofar as I believe that metaphysics must take into account the full breath of being, in either of these domains (especially if we expand so-called ens rationis to include the full domain of human culture in art and morality as well²³), one could perhaps say that I am an advocate for a kind of “supertranscendental metaphysics.” However, I think this is completely unnecessary terminology and believe that I can jettison the appellation “supertranscendentality,” at least in this case: for the attribution of being to, for example, second intentions and ens reale is just one more case of a properly proportional understanding of being itself. This does not require us to say that being somehow “supertranscends” being and non-being or two completely heterogeneous kinds of being. Even though second intentions are not “mind-independent,” they are in a very important way quite real—they have their own essences and, therefore, also merit receiving the transcendental res, a thing-reality with an essence.²⁴ Moreover, they have a grounding in ens naturae (e.g., in the structure of the intellect, the various metaphysical presuppositions for reasoning and defining, etc.). Therefore, the bridge between the analogates is not insuperable; we can unpack the relationship between various kinds of being, if such analogates are—as in the present example—second intentional or “mind-independent.” However, that detailed task is something I am working on elsewhere for a long-delayed monograph; however, I am sure it finds its echoes in my other work, including here on To Be a Thomist.

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1. This was recently observed by Fr. Philip-Neri Reese, and it is a point that I wish were more native to the intellectual bloodstream of those who speak about Thomas Aquinas. See Philip-Neri Reese, “Matthew Aquarius’s Supertranscendental Critique of the Univocity of Being,” (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VzmHzLuYrk). For the several works of Matthias Aquarius (d.1591), see https://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=3834.

   Popular discussions of “the transcendentals” often occasion vague rhapsody used by well-meaning Catholics who wish to gain points in culture wars against an often-bleak and utilitarian culture. Poetry and rhetoric are necessary; but the rhetor and poet should somewhat ground the use of terms, when this is possible, lest poetry and rhetoric pass over into that other species of merely apparent reasoning which is also studied in material logic: sophistry.↩︎

2. Such use of quantity would itself be only analogous, according to the analogy of proper proportionality. Concerning the highest-level subdivision of transcendental quantity (of power or virtue and of number) see Iosephus Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, vol. 1, 13^th ed., ed. Eucharius Zenzen (Friburg: Herder, 1961), Logica, pt. 2, ch. 2, no. 184.1. For a much fuller division, in view of discussions regarding analogy (especially so-called analogy of inequality), see the discussion and diagram associated with Iacobus M. Ramirez, De Analogia in Opera Omnia, vol. 2.3 (Madrid: Instituto de Filosofia “Luis Vives”, 1972), no. 700 (p.1543–1548)↩︎

3. To contrast the more horizontal accounts of transcendentality to those which are more so concerned with “verticality,” one sometimes speaks of “predicamental” vs. “transcendental” analogy. And there are other ways of considering this as well, as regards the nature of the “distance” separating analogates. See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2022), 479–487. A more detailed schema (developed in the discussion both preceding and following it) presenting this issue of “analogical distance” can be found at the end of Iacobus M. Ramirez, De Analogia in Opera Omnia, vol. 2.2.↩︎

4. Or, finite and infinite being; or finite being and ens per se subsistens. In general usage, the “created”-“uncreated” contrast is partly influenced by a somewhat general Byzantine usage in my vocabulary, though the usage here is somewhat loose.↩︎

5. See Jan Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought: From Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suárez (Leiden: Brill, 2012).↩︎

6. See Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought, 635.↩︎

7. Regarding this quite interesting turn in scholastic metaphysics, in English see Philip-Neri Reese, “Supertranscendentality and Metaphysics: An Aporia in the Thought of John Duns Scotus,” ACPQ 90, no. 3 (2016): 539–61; John P. Doyle, “Another God, Chimerae, Goat-Stags, and Man-Lions: A Seventeenth-Century Debate about Impossible Objects,” Review of Metaphysics 48, no. 4 (1995): 771–808; “Between Transcendental and Transcendental,” The Review of Metaphysics 50, no. 4 (1997): 783–815; idem., On the Borders of Being and Knowing: Late Scholastic Theory of Supertranscendental Being (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2012); Victor Salas, “Richard Lynch, S.J. on the Community of Being,” Review of Metaphysics 78 (2024): 31–54.↩︎

8. See Émile Brehier, La Théorie des incorporels dans l’ancien stoïcisme (Paris: Vrin, 1928). Regarding various translations of the expression, see John P. Doyle, “Sprouts from Greek Gardens: Antisthenes, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics,” in On the Borders of Being and Knowing, 9–10.↩︎

9. It is not my concern here to address the debates that exist regarding the exact metaphysical status of the various Stoic “incorporeals” in relation to their (meta)physics and logic. For a recent entrée into the debates surrounding this notion, see Ada Bronowski, The Stoics on Lekta: All There Is to Say (Oxford, UK: Oxford University of Press, 2019).↩︎

10. See Doyle, “Sprouts from Greek Gardens: Antisthenes, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics,” 1–17.↩︎

11. For a series of articles dedicated to this topic, see https://www.athomist.com/articles/tag/Second+Intentions.↩︎

12. By which I mean something very specific, not merely a synonym for relatio rationis, but rather, precisely the domain of “second intentions.”↩︎

13. See Cajetan, Commentary on Being and Essence, ed. and trans. Lottie H. Kendzierski and Francis C. Wade (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1964), ch. 1, q. 1 (p. 63–64).

    Even more starkly, Suarez will hold that the unity between ens reale and ens rationis is only a question of extrinsic proportionality (that is, metaphor). See Francisco Suárez, Metaphysical Disputation 54: On Beings of Reason (De entibus rationis), trans. John P. Doyle (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995), section 1, nos. 9 and 10 (p. 65–66):

    Although it in some way shares the name of being (and not just equivocally, and a they say ‘by chance,’ but through some analogy and proportionality to true being), a being of reason cannot however share or agree with real beings in the concept of being…[He then argues for this on the basis of Aristotle’s authority, on the ultimate grounding of distinctiones rationis, and given that whatever has no proportion to real being cannot be called a being in anyway.]

    Therefore, being is not said of a being of reason except through some analogy, at least of proportionality, or some reference (habitudo), i.e., because it is in some way founded on being or refers to it…. However, a common concept has no place here, because a concept of this kind requires that the form signified by the term be truly and intrinsically shared by the inferiors. But ‘to be’ (esse), from which something is called a being (ens), cannot be intrinsically shared by beings of reason. For to be only objectively in reason is not to be, but rather to be thought or to be imagined…. [And as one startling, albeit internally coherent, conclusion:] therefore, they cannot be said to have an essence…

    Also see the remarks by Doyle on page 23 of the same volume.↩︎

14. I base this claim, primarily on oral remarks that he makes in the lecture cited in note 1 above. It would not surprise me if this is, indeed, the case based on a complete documentary presentation.↩︎

15. Here, we must note the very qualified sense in which this unified concept must be accepted. A developed notion of “imperfect abstraction” is important in order to avoid a kind of covert univocity. There are further technical issues involved with such abstraction, partly discussed from a purely philosophical angle by Simon in his “On Order in Analogical Sets.” With a more historical-textual bent, one should consult the relevant studies by D’Ettore and the literature with which he engages.↩︎

16. By citing this text from Gredt, I do not, however, agree with all of his particular views regarding the subject of metaphysics and its various conclusion-objects. Gredt’s work (and manner of dividing being) remains marked by elements of the problematic Wolffian schema of general and special metaphysics (and also Suárez). See Thomas C. O’Brien, Metaphysics and the Existence of God, ed. Cajetan Cuddy (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2017), 54–56.

    Even with the (admittedly not-small) modifications to Thomist metaphysics that I propose, I would still retain that the subject of metaphysics is ens commune—but both as common to the ten categories, and, more profoundly, as commonly subject to the distinction of act and potency. My position is close to what was expressed once upon a time in John Deely, The Tradition via Heidegger: An Essay

    on the Meaning of Being in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), 7:

    For if the intentional order does not formally touch the entitative order in the particular kind of act / potency relation known as substance / accident composition, yet it does permeate it through other modes of act / potency composition—which is but to say that act / potency analysis as such cannot be reduced to substance / accident ontology, and that it is the former, not the latter, which provides the genuine categories of first philosophy, that is, of Metaphysics.

    The sense of Thomas’s own texts (and the insights of any sound and humble metaphysics) indicate that the subject of metaphysics cannot include (as various figures have held) God within the primary subject of attribution or the formal object of the sapiential-science of metaphysics. God is a subject of attribution, but known precisely as a principle of the primary subject of attribution, ens commune—whether such commonality is that of the 10 categories or those which are subject to the distinction between act and potency. (In fact, it is primarily through the objectivity of act and potency that one formulates metaphysical knowledge of God.)

    Truth be told, I do not prefer the terminology of Gredt regarding “transcendental” either. Instead, the general schema of analogy (and of transcendentality) that I hold is akin to the division found in the fifth chapter of Degrees of Knowledge (though perhaps with some slight modifications from my own reflection): 1˚ a kind of general analogy of being at the level of the categories (as one species of “dianoetic” knowledge), then 2˚ a kind of “ananoetic” knowledge which is itself subdivided as 2.1˚ pertaining to purely created-spiritual realities and 2.2˚ God, as well as 2.3˚ as super-analogical in the order of faith-cognition. What distinguishes me, however, from the Thomist mainstream is that I believe that the cognition 2.1˚ pertains to what Fr. Gredt calls “supertranscendental.” (I believe this is the case, at least. I must reflect a bit more on this explicitly; however, due to the spirituality involved in ens rationis—understood as logical being, artistic being, and moral being—I believe that the analogy here is loftier than 1˚.)

    Maritain’s division of analogy recognizes much more clearly how metaphysics: begins 1˚ by conceiving of being according to the ten categories as being (and not as mobile, as in the philosophy of nature), a degree of eidetic visualization that is closest to the proper object of our intellect; then 2.1˚ considers finite subjects that are subject to the distinction of act and potency (and here can consider ens commune a second time, including now the intentional, the moral, and the artistic); and finally 2.2˚ considers God by way of a completely non-circumscriptive analogy.

    All of this is said, however, with a filial piety toward Gredt, whose labors in Thomist-philosophical pedagogy are admirable.↩︎

17. Note here the presence of a distinction between predicamental analogy and transcendenteal analogy. I retain this distinction in reality but not in name.↩︎

18. Iosephus Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, vol. 2, 13^th ed., ed. Eucharius Zenzen (Friburg: Herder, 1961), General Metaphysics, pt. 1, ch. 1 no. 618 (p. 9–10). A certain Ivo Kerze contacted me by email once upon a time and mentioned this intriguing passage. It is also cited in Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought, 643–4. Along with the several other later scholastics, this text in Gredt is also mentioned in Doyle, “Between Transcendental and Transcendental,” 815n174.↩︎

19. Although retaining the vocabulary of analogy, I am following John C. Cahalan in speaking of “non-generic” notions to capture the unique character of analogical predication. See “Non-generic Abstraction” in John C. Cahalan, Causal Realism: An Essay on Philosophic Method and the Foundations of Knowledge, Sources in Semiotics, vol. 2, ed. John N. Deely and Brooke Williams (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 421–434↩︎

20. This is a point regularly made by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange concerning how analogates are simpliciter diverse and only secundum quid like to each other. Also, on here on To Be a Thomist, see “Thomistic Note: The Use of Triplex Via Throughout the Various Forms of Analogy” https://www.athomist.com/articles/thomistic-note-the-use-of-triplex-via-throughout-the-various-forms-of-analogy.↩︎

21. I would go further to make the recommendation that ens rationis itself be understood, according to a kind of 3-fold subdivision, namely ens logicum, ens artificiale, and ens morale. At the time of the writing of this note, this is the subject of a monograph that I am working on, developing what can be found in Matthew K. Minerd “Beyond Non-Being: Thomistic Metaphysics on Second Intentions, Ens morale, and Ens artificiale,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 91, no. 3 (July, 2017): 353–379.↩︎

22. Concerning this matter of affirmation and denial of the common analogue, see Yves R. Simon, “On Order in Analogical Sets,” The New Scholasticism 34, no. 1 (Jan. 1960): 1–42; also included in Philosopher at Work, ed. Anthony O. Simon (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 135–171.↩︎

23. See note 18 above.↩︎

24. See Matthew K. Minerd, “The Analogy of Res-ality,” Reality 1 (2020): 124–145. For a study of the transcendental res in Aquinas, see Joseph Owens, Aquinas on Being and Thing (Niagra, NY: Niagara University Press, 1981).↩︎