This question has
nothing to do with "transcendentalism" in the form of Emerson's
philosophy. "Transcendence" and "transcendental" are two
completely different things.
It is a question that essentially arises out of modern philosophy's concern with subjectivity as the source of knowledge. For thinkers such as Descartes, Kant, and Husserl immanence refers to inner life of the subject. The "I think" is usually taken as the prototype of immanence.
By transcendence, many things could be meant. For Kant, transcendence refers to something that cannot be accessible to the senses (God and soul are examples). For later phenomenological thinkers such as Husserl, transcendence simply refers to the relationship with anything outside of the subject. A rock, for instance, is transcendent to the subject. Other thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas would say that only the other person is genuinely transcendent to me. Others would say that only God is transcendent. In any case, all of these accounts of transcendence would agree with the idea that transcendence is not to be found in the self alone, but only in some respect outside of that self.
It is a question that essentially arises out of modern philosophy's concern with subjectivity as the source of knowledge. For thinkers such as Descartes, Kant, and Husserl immanence refers to inner life of the subject. The "I think" is usually taken as the prototype of immanence.
By transcendence, many things could be meant. For Kant, transcendence refers to something that cannot be accessible to the senses (God and soul are examples). For later phenomenological thinkers such as Husserl, transcendence simply refers to the relationship with anything outside of the subject. A rock, for instance, is transcendent to the subject. Other thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas would say that only the other person is genuinely transcendent to me. Others would say that only God is transcendent. In any case, all of these accounts of transcendence would agree with the idea that transcendence is not to be found in the self alone, but only in some respect outside of that self.
The God who made the
world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell
in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He
needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things; and
He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,
having determined {their} appointed times, and the boundaries of their
habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and
find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move
and exist, as even some of your own poets have, said, 'For we also are His
offspring. Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the
Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and
thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now
declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day
in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has
appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.
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