Definition of "transcendental" []

• Philosophy Concerned with the a priori or intuitive basis of knowledge as independent of experience. (adjective)
• Philosophy Asserting a fundamental irrationality or supernatural element in experience. (adjective)
• Surpassing all others; superior. (adjective)
• Beyond common thought or experience; mystical or supernatural. (adjective)
• Mathematics Of or relating to a real or complex number that is not the root of any polynomial that has positive degree and rational coefficients. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""I apply the term transcendental to all knowledge which is not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of these objects, so far as this mode of cognition is possible a priori.""
• "I apply the term transcendental to all knowledge which is not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of these objects, so far as this mode of cognition is possible a priori."
• "What struck me in his words was that what he defined as "transcendental and important" was not only the time he spent with his family and friends."