Transcendentals

The transcendentals (Latin: transcendentalia) are the properties of being. In typical accounts being is said to be One, Good and True (unum, bonum, verum). Additional properties such as Thing, Beautiful and Being (ens) are often posited as transcendentals but remain more disputed.

History

Parmenides first inquired of the properties co-extensive with being.Plato then followed (see Form of the Good). However, it is in Aristotle that we first see the term transcendentals used. They were so called as they transcended (ὑπερβαίνειν huperbainein) each of his ten categories. Aristotle discusses only unity ("One") explicitly because it is the only transcendental intrinsically related to being, whereas truth and goodness relate to rational creatures.

St. Thomas Aquinas posited five transcendentals: res, unum, aliquid, bonum, verum; or "thing", "one", "something", "good", and "true". St. Thomas derives the five explicitly as transcendentals, though in some cases he follows the typical list of the transcendentals consisting of the One, the Good, and the True.