---
date: '2024-01-14'
description: the medieval doctrine that unity, truth, and goodness apply to being as such.
id: Transcendentals
modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:26 GMT-04:00
tags:
  - philosophy
title: Transcendentals
created: '2024-01-14'
published: '2024-01-14'
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---
> properties of being that are universal to all beings

In medieval scholastic philosophy, transcendentals are concepts that apply across the categories of being. A substance can be one, and so can a quality. Unity therefore exceeds the scope of either category. Common examples are being, one, true, and good; medieval philosophers disagree about their number and how they relate. [Goris and Aertsen’s account](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentals-medieval/) traces these differences.

For Aquinas, these terms differ in meaning while referring to the same beings. Calling something one considers its lack of division in itself. Calling it true considers its relation to an intellect, and calling it good considers it as desirable. Goodness in this metaphysical sense concerns a thing’s actuality and perfection; a separate argument is needed to establish moral goodness.

### truth.

Aquinas says that truth belongs primarily to the intellect when its judgment agrees with what is. Things are called true through their relation to an intellect. His claim that being and truth are convertible means that every being is intelligible in principle. The existence of a judgment alone gives us no guarantee that its content agrees with reality. See [_Summa theologiae_ I, question 16, articles 1–3](https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1016.htm).

Kant uses _transcendental_ for an inquiry into the a priori conditions of our cognition of objects, meaning the conditions that can be known independently of experience. This is the usage behind [[thoughts/Philosophy and Kant|transcendental idealism]]. The scholastic doctrine concerns the common attributes of being; Kant’s inquiry concerns how cognition of objects is possible. See the introduction to the [_Critique of Pure Reason_, A11–12/B25](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm).