English

Alternative forms

• trans-phenomenal

Adjective

transphenomenal ‎(not comparable)

1. (philosophy, especially Kantianism) Of or pertaining to a process, nature, or realm which cannot be directly experienced using such human faculties as conceptualization or perception by means of the five senses.
   • 1894, George Sylvester Morris, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Critical Exposition‎, page 193:

     We have said that the distinction between phenomena and the trans-phenomenal is founded upon and interwoven with the distinction in our conscious experience, or in the nature and process of knowledge, between sense and the intelligible, or, better, the spiritual conditions of sense, or between "consciousness," the sensible or "felt" and particular product, and "self-consciousness," the universal and conditioning process.

   • 1957, Theodore Meyer Greene, Moral, Aesthetic, and Religious Insight‎, page 87:

     Yet, inconsistently but fortunately, Kant does repeatedly refer, in the Critique of Judgment, to a trans-phenomenal realm.

   • 1980, Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Discovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel‎, page 120:

     But over what transphenomenal imperfections does the immortal soul continue to triumph on and on and on? Is Kant also postulating transphenomenal inclinations?

   • 1984, Frank R. Podgorski, Ego—Revealer, Concealer: A Key to Yoga:

     Now even that basic finite distinction of a subject which knows and an object which is known, that apparent essential for human knowledge, fades into a more [sic] transphenomenal or transcendental wisdom.

Derived terms

• transphenomenality