Definition of "transcendent" []

• Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme. (adjective)
• Lying beyond the ordinary range of perception: "fails to achieve a transcendent significance in suffering and squalor” ( National Review). (adjective)
• Philosophy Transcending the Aristotelian categories. (adjective)
• Philosophy In Kant's theory of knowledge, being beyond the limits of experience and hence unknowable. (adjective)
• Being above and independent of the material universe. Used of the Deity. (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.

• "Also talking about what he thinks is his best quality, which is his leadership, his experience on national security, and what he calls the transcendent issue that e wants voters to look to him for, and that is the war in Iraq and national security."
• "Foley is what I refer to as a transcendent performer."
• "And the trouble with modern man is that having given up the belief in transcendent things, he still has inside of himself a sense of transcendent obligations."