Reflection on the meaning of philosophical concepts with a long history is illuminating for both its continuities and contrasts. The long history of “transcendental” reveals five major movements and corresponding points of contrast: (i) its medieval or Scholastic roots; (ii) its transformation with Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism; (iii) Hegel’s objective idealist reification of the transcendental followed by the more austere “neo-Kantians;” (iv) its appropriation by Edmund Husserl; and (v) its critique by Martin Heidegger and later existentialists. After briefly running through each of these interpretations of the transcendental, I would like to suggest a couple of lessons concerning the value and dangers of appealing to “transcendence” within philosophy today.

The Medieval Origins of the Transcendental

Since at least the 13^th century the term “transcendence” has been commonly associated with Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280), Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) and his followers, who took it to mean “being,” “one,” “true,” and “good.” These properties were attributed to beings in general, irrespective of their articulation in the Aristotelian categories of substance, quality, relation, etc. In this sense, transcendentia are transcendental because they are trans-categorical, an interpretation that can be traced back to Aristotle’s distinction between concepts of “being” and “unity/one” in his Metaphysics IV (Ch 1–2). Aristotle (1979) maintained that even though these concepts of being and unity are distinct, whatever fits one category will satisfy the other, and that both must apply to any kind of being whatsoever. Hence, in this early phase, transcendental was identified with how some linguistic terms act as meta-categories, which extend to insights about reality in general.

In the later Scotist tradition, this theme was made more explicit as the transcendentia are described as the “most common” (communisimus) and “basic” (prima) among all beings. For the Scholastics, including Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, this inspired the contention that there should be a universal ontology supportive of their theological intuitions.  The being of God was thus posited as “above” any given category; an essence wholly unconstrained by categorial determination, who stands in a unique, originary relation to all beings. If it was not the first instance in human history, it was certainly a unique case in which the category—as experientially or intuitively encountered—was identified with a being of ultimate reality.  

It should first be mentioned that the search for categorical priority is not lost to my own efforts to develop the metaphysics of “dialectical holism.” Indeed, I think this cannot be avoided as a feature of human experience and that it serves crucial functions both emotionally and cognitively. However, in relation to “God” or any other explicit predication of our most universal category, this concept of transcendence risks dogmatism and vacuity. Dogmatism is a danger insofar as our predications of the overarching category are maintained (come what may) for no other reason than some a priori coherence of preconceptions or faithful/wishful thinking. Moreover, it risks vacuity insofar as our transcendent category does not lend itself to a particular path of enactment or practice.

However, in relation to “God” or any other explicit predication of our most universal category, this concept of transcendence risks dogmatism and vacuity.

I think that the ideals that guide us down any philosophical path should be reflexively entertained, such that we consider where they are bringing us in our sensorimotor habits over time. Following my own “dialectical holist” interpretation of the transcendental, I will argue that the way forward should involve an onto-hermeneutic feedback loop, in and through which we transform our understanding of the transcendent category and reintegrate our understanding of how this changes our consequent enactments. In other words, insofar as we cannot help but relate our own consciousness to the transcendent in some way, we should be mindful about where this concept can bring us as we live and grow in this world.

Kant’s Epistemic Transcendence

In Kant, we find that a core of the original Scholastic sense of the “transcendental” remains intact—especially in its association with universal ontology and the a priori—though it undergoes a transformation most evident in its ontological implications. Kant still identifies his transcendental philosophy as ontologia, but for him, this is not in terms of immediate cogitations, but the conditions of possibility for any cognition whatsoever: “I call all cognition transcen­dental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori” (Kant 1998, B 25).

Kant thus retains the Scholastic emphasis on knowability, so it remains a form of ontologia, but we here shift our focus from an identification of concepts with objects of the world, to the necessary concepts, and their accompanying logic, which make any a priori valid knowledge possible. This transforms a purely ontological conception of the transcendental into an (a priori) epistemic conception of “prima” in Kant’s transcendental logic. Kant maintains that only those (a priori) means by which we cognize can be called transcendental, so it concerns only a critique of the origin of cognition, not a relation to empirical objects (Kant 1998, B 80). Here we find the rudiments of what would become essential to the development of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl—an issue we will return to below.

Though Kant appro­priates Aristotle’s categories, in his elucidation of the a priori con­cepts of the understanding (Kant 1998, A 76–77), he designates as “transcendental” what had traditionally served as a point of contrast to the transcendental. Specifically, the domain of transcendental logic—the objectively valid transcendental categories of the understanding—takes on the character of a transcendental immanence. Kant’s transcendence is immanent because it is based on a synthetic act of judgement, which produces the logical conditions of possibility for any immediate empirical experience. Though these “transcendent” concepts of the understanding can in principle never be encountered in an empirical experience, e.g. God, the soul, or the cosmos as a whole, they are believed to be necessary a priori.

I believe that what was missing in Kant, and later idealists, is a trajectory of refinement, a possibility of questioning the logic and categories themselves in a way that lends them to further development.

Kant’s transcendental philosophy was significant for how dramatically it challenged British philosophy in general, and empiricism in particular. While adherents to the latter, such as Hume, had hoped to establish the conditions and origin of the understanding, they were incapable of doing so insofar as they presupposed experience as the basis of knowledge. Kant rejected this presupposition and sought the a priori transcendental conditions of any such subjectivity capable of understanding.  Despite being “immanent” then, Kant’s transcendent categories stood as infinite mediations between the conscious observer and the world—this was an challenge that Hegel and the absolute idealists aimed to overcome.

While I appreciate the effort to recover the conditions of intelligibility through pure reflection, my only criticism is against any contention that this task could be completed. I believe that what was missing in Kant, and later idealists, is a trajectory of refinement, a possibility of questioning the logic and categories themselves in a way that lends them to further development. This, I believe, is a minimal requirement for any reflexive and humble effort to explicate the transcendental.

The Immanent Transcendence of Absolute Idealism

Kant’s transcendental idealism provided the groundwork for the later absolute idealists like Schelling and Hegel, who took these a priori (epistemic) conditions to be imbued with a deeper ontological significance. Hegel’s conception of the “transcendent” also departs significantly from traditional dualistic views that posit a “mere beyond” (Jenseits) or a supersensible world fundamentally separated from our own. For Hegel, transcendence was a dynamic inherent to the natures of consciousness and human history, both of which culminated in Absolute knowledge. While my own contentions for dialectical holism defends Hegel’s dynamical transformation on methodological and ontological grounds, I have rejected most fervently any claims of Absolute individuation.

For Hegel, finitude is inherently self-transcending, as anything determined, restricted, or limited can only be so in opposition to a “beyond” that lacks that restriction. This he illustrated with splendid precision in his Science of Logic (2010) with regard for the incomplete nature of Being. In terms of our own experience then, Hegel believed that transcendence begins with the “ought” (Sollen), which is the negative reference a thing has toward its own limit. Hegel reasoned that consciousness is thus self-transcendent. Unlike natural life, consciousness is “for itself its concept” and therefore possesses the inherent tendency to “go beyond itself” and “spoil its own limited satisfaction.” In this case however, the finite identity is not destroyed by one’s aim towards the infinite; Hegel believed that inherent to the transcendental movement of consciousness is an effort to negate one’s own limitation in order to “elevate itself to infinity.”

In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel argued that the Absolute is a transcendent unity that is immanent in all its natural and historical phases (1977). Thus, the Absolute transcends its parts not as a separate entity, but as the total Gestalt that sublates and determines the nature of the parts that constitute it. In a historical context then, the Absolute Spirit is the fulfillment of all finite forms, which are absorbed and transfigured within its “transcendent plenitude.” In the negative unity of the Idea, the infinite “overreaches” or surpasses the finite, yet this transcendence remains grounded in the activity of the whole. Contrary to many common misunderstandings then, the telos for Hegel, is immanent in each phase—the transcendent is the whole inherent to each phase—not a future state of being.

Applying this idea to the conscious experience of the transcendent, Hegel makes a crucial distinction between natural, contingent time and the conceptual movement of Spirit in History. Absolute Knowing involves the “annulling” or “extinguishing” of time—so again, it cannot be a goal state somewhere in our “future.” Spirit, for Hegel, does not exist outside of history, but conceptualizes its own movement without being bound by the intuition of time as a mere linear succession of events. Absolute Knowing is thus the moment when Spirit reflects on its historical becoming to achieve a timeless self-identity within its particular historical moment.

A central doctrine of Hegel’s philosophy is the rejection of the “unbridgeable gulf of intelligibility” that Kant and others posited between the subject’s representation (phenomena) and the thing-in-itself (noumena). Hegel thus defended the categorial continuity of thought and being: “what is rational is real and what is real is rational.” What things are “in themselves” can be identified with what they are “for consciousness” because both are conceptually structured by relations of material incompatibility and consequence. By construing Substance also as Subject, Hegel moves from a “thing-oriented” metaphysics to one based on the self-determining activity of the Concept: thus the “transcendent” is located within the self-developing movement of reality (Pippin, 2018). For my own part, I see this thread of Hegel’s contribution to be an advance that has been largely neglected by later analytic and phenomenological philosophies. Though this trend has begun to change with the works of Harris, Pippin, and Brandom, among others, I do not think that phenomenologists have yet to adequately appreciate how it is possible to distinguish reality from mental activity while also retaining a transcendental or epistemic bridge between the two.

Nevertheless, it was against the backdrop of absolute idealism’s demise that a neo-Kantian tradition arose as a fertile ground for what would become transcendental phenomenology. This development took place through a psychological reading of Kant by Neo-Kantians like Fries (1807),  J.F. Herbart (1776–1841), and Hermann Lotze (1817–1881)—the Marburg and Southwest Schools more generally—who interpreted Kant’s reasoning in naturalistic and materialistic terms. Though many appealed to Kant to mediate convictions of scientific realism and idealism, the trend at this time was towards empirical psychology, so a proper reconciliation was not forthcoming. Hence, in the positive sciences of the time, the transcendent was reduced to the scientific method and its resulting abstractions. In Husserl, we find a philosophy that erred in the opposite direction, by reifying the transcendental and making it the cornerstone of phenomenology. 

Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology

The neo-Kantians were committed to a range of psychologistic theories, which blended logic and psychology in ways that were deeply incoherent. Neither psychology nor logic had a well-defined foundation, but psychologism (e.g. Mill) maintained the empirical discipline of psychology could provide an exhaustive ground for logic. Husserl’s phenomenology did not begin as a transcendental philosophy or an idealism, but he consistently maintained an idealist interpretation of pure logic. This was the basis for his rejection of psychologism, which put him at odds with the majority of contemporary psychologists and non-idealist philosophers. Husserl’s later and more mature embrace of transcendental phenomenology was even rejected by the phenomenologists who surrounded him, like Reinach, Scheler, and others in Gottingen. This put him in a unique and unpopular position regarding his appeal to the transcendental.

Husserl’s intention in phenomenological psychology was meant to elucidate the “eidetic” mechanics of mental life. He believed this could be achieved through an epoché or suspension of any background assumptions of the natural world that might influence our interpretation or judgement of the respective objects of experience. This was meant to stand as a self-sufficient a priori science of its own, independent of psychology on the one hand, and what would later become a transcendental phenomenology on the other (Husserl 1997, p. 92). By contrast, transcendental phenomenology, specifically addresses the problem of understanding, or the objects of experience, with regard for their evidential character. In contrast with the positive sciences, transcendental phenomenology seeks a ground for evidence in pure subjectivity.

Thus, the kind of phenomenology one endorses will depend on how far one takes the reduction (or thinks it can be taken). For Husserl, transcendental, subjectivity is no longer “positively” deter­mined on the basis of a pre-given horizon of empiricism or “nature:” what remains after the transcen­dental reduction is the “universum” of “transcendentally pure” subjectivity and, enclosed within it, Husserl believed we could find “all the actual and possible ‘phenomena’ of objectivities, all modes of appearance and modes of consciousness that pertain to such objectivities” (Husserl 1997, p. 97). In this way, the method aims to internalize the conditions and content of any other knowledge, science, etc. The concept of phenomenon takes on a double meaning from phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology: both are rooted in a “universum” of reflection as a ground of any manifestation, but permit two axes of explication—one positive and the other concerning the transcendental conditions of the world. These conditions, specifically concern how any object is “constituted as” any given kind.

For Kant, experience is understood as embodied in empirical knowledge, while subjectivity is a set of cognitive functions, the guiding principles of which are necessary for establishing the objective validity of empiri­cal knowledge. Consequently, Kant’s investigative method is regressive (via transcendental deduction), because he aims to trace objective determinations in empirical judgments back to the subjective conditions that rest in their corresponding cogni­tive capacities. By contrast, Husserl, “proceeds not regressively but descriptively, because any given intentio of consciousness and its intentum represents for him a given unity of experience available for intuitive apprehension” (Dodd 2021, p. 393). For Husserl, phenomena present themselves in their naked essence not under the pressure of a priori principles and transcendental deductive reasoning, but through an immanent reduction and reflection on the intentional structures themselves.

However complex (and problematic) the theme of transcendental subjectivity becomes in its later genetic phenomenological methodology, the analysis never shifts back to Kant’s regressive (deductive) strategy, but remains committed to attending to the eidetic structures. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology thus aims to bring us “back to the things them­selves!” Husserl nevertheless believed that his transcendental phenomenology could still be considered a universal ontology because it contained the basic structure for any ontology whatsoever, insofar as any such ontology must obtain in and through some intention-object-horizon morphology (Husserl 1997, p. 99). The quite radical presumption then (in modern terms) is that the method could elucidate the entire phase space of consciousness, i.e. thereby providing the absolute context of any cognition whatsoever. So, such an ontology would appear possible, only if the reduction could be completed to the extent that Husserl believed. Many philosophers however—myself included—have rejected the idea that Husserl’s meta-eidetic science is possible.

Transcendence in Heidegger and Existential Phenomenology

In his Being and Time, Heidegger maintains that “Ontological inquiry” into the nature of Being is more primordial than the “ontical” inquiry of the positive sciences (2001, p. 31). Consequently, given that Being is the proper topic of investigation for phenomenology, ontology is only possible in and through phenomenology. For Heidegger however, “phenomenology” takes a different meaning from Husserl’s Cartesian orientation. Whereas Husserl had uncritically embraced Descartes’ methodological principles that demand a delimitation of being in terms of clarity, distinctness, and certainty, Heidegger thinks this whole tradition has only obfuscated the nature of Being by trading in such abstractions.

Nevertheless, Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology, grounded in an analytic of Dasein (being-there) is no less transcendental than the philosophies of Husserl or Kant. The basic reason for this continuity is that Heidegger’s focus on Dasein remains the being of an understanding, the existential explication of which determines the horizon of the sense for Being in general. Because Dasein is that being for whom Being is an issue, Dasein enjoys (or suffers) a unique form of self-reference, which unfolds in and through time. Hence, temporality, for Heidegger, is revealed as the transcendental horizon of the meaning of being (2001, p. 63). Heidegger’s culminating appeal to the concept of transcendence can be found in his concept of care: insofar as Dasein is temporal extension, this is possible only because we extend our ideals of value from historical reflections into future projections. Care is thus seen as Dasein’s pre-ontological way of interpreting itself:

The transcendental ‘generality’ of the phenomenon of care and of all fundamental existentialia is, on the other hand, broad enough to present a basis on which every interpretation of Dasein which is ontical and belongs to a world-view must move, whether Dasein is understood as affliction [Not] and the ‘cares of life’ or in an opposite manner

Martin Heidegger (2001, p. 244)

Here, I believe we can begin to see a strong connection between Hegel and the later existentialists, which bypasses Husserl’s more radically idealist project. At least on this point of transcendence, Heidegger presents a way of reconsidering transcendence and immanence in a way that is grounded in our ever so finite and incomplete efforts to pursue value. It would take the later works of Merleau-Ponty to sufficiently develop these ideas—partially based on further connections back to Hegel—which resulted in a more coherent existential phenomenology based on embodiment. His contributions, specifically from his Structure of Behavior, for example, have been essential for the more recent development of the theory of autopoiesis: only here do we find transcendence located in the purposeful, self-preserving dynamic (conatus) inherent to all living beings (Thompson, 2007).

“Transcendental phenomenology” was historically identified with Husserl’s Cartesian project, which was subsequently ridiculed by Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and most of the existential philosophers who followed. For Sartre (1960), among others, the central assumption was that we are condemned to be free. The goal here was to secure our sense of responsibility for deciding value and purpose independent of religion or any worldly authority. The consequence of this move however, was to assert a much stronger metaphysical conception of transcendence over the natural world than is typically appreciated. In this way, an existential conception of freedom—just as Husserl’s eidos—internalizes the absolute that was previously relegated to the heavens or to the evolution of the cosmos.

In brief, I find myself siding with Merleau-Ponty’s assessment of transcendence and freedom. In the Phenomenology of Perception, he maintains that the subject should not be understood as merely constituting the multiplicity of its experiences or as constituted by them:

we must not treat the transcendental Ego as the true subject and the empirical self as its shadow or its wake. If that were their relationship to each other, we could withdraw into the constituting agency, and such reflection would destroy time, which would be left without date or place

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2005, p. 495)

He goes on to say that on the one hand, the inseparability of world and subject is because the subject is nothing but a project of the world; but on the other hand, their inseparability is because this world is likewise a projection of the subject. Thus, the “subject is a being-in-the-world and the world remains ‘subjective’ since its texture and articulations are traced out by the subject’s movement of transcendence” (pp. 499–500).

Here, we find the inspiration for the concept of co-emergence, which has become quite popular in enactivist philosophy of mind since the 90s. What is not typically recognized however, is that with this notion we return to Hegel’s triadic logic of Being-Non-Being-Becoming, and thus to a dynamical and immanent conception of transcendence. While this preserves our notion of an objective world, it finally makes possible a rigorous phenomenology that does not take our transcendence to be absolute from the first. In the final section, I would like to make some comparisons and suggestions on how we might make further progress in understanding the dangers and fruits of appealing to transcendence in philosophy today. 

Some Lessons for a Contemporary Phenomenology of Transcendence

The issue that most existentialists had with Husserl’s conception of transcendence—one with which I completely agree—was that it required that we can “complete” the phenomenological reductions to arrive at pure or eidetic structures of experience. Interestingly, the critiques that existentialists had of Husserl on this point were not so dissimilar from those they made of Hegel’s Absolute, i.e. both require an ideal form of knowledge that is ultimately inhuman. I would like to suggest that there does exist an opportunity for reconceiving transcendence in an onto-hermeneutic fashion, which reconciles the Absolute and existential interpretations.

Hegel and Husserl both redefine “transcendence” in a way that departs from traditional “other-worldly” (supersensible) meanings and locate it within the structures of subjectivity and consciousness. While Husserl understands transcendence to be “in immanence”—whereby objects are constituted within the stream of consciousness—Hegel views it as the self-transcendence of Spirit, where the “Absolute” is a whole that sublates its own moments. At first sight, this is not so dissimilar to Husserl, who argues that everything “outside” gets its being-sense from the “inside” of consciousness through the performance of intentionality. Indeed, completing the transcendental reduction as Husserl would have it, reveals the underlying essences, just as Hegel’s Aufheben is supposed to uncover the categorical moments that make any given moment of consciousness possible.

Hegel’s conception of transcendence, or “movement beyond limits,” also remains consistent with Heidegger’s appeal to Dasein—both are inherently self-transcendent in and through time because consciousness “is for itself its concept.” Thus, subjectivity constantly destroys its own limited satisfaction to go beyond its current boundaries. For phenomenologists of any kind, as a whole, consciousness (or Spirit) does not exist separately from its parts but sublates and transfigures the finite. Hegel’s Absolute is at once immanent in natural and historical phases and transcendent beyond any single temporal manifestation, just as the transcendental method is meant to hold moments of experience together so as to reveal their implicit essence.

However, the relationship between these respective approaches to phenomenology reveals fundamental disagreements about the “gulf” between thought and reality. Hegel argues that neither the pure nor the empirical “I” can be an absolute beginning; rather, the “I” is a result (Resultat) of the dialectical development of Spirit and history. In this way he manages to post an objective world that is identifiable in and through the process of thought itself. By contrast, Husserl starts from the apodictic (unquestionable) Cartesian “I am”—something he supposedly discovered as an essence through the reduction. Many philosophers however, including myself, see this kind of “absolute individuation” as a philosophical dead-end that lands us in subjectivism or dualism, rather than providing a viable starting point. For Hegel, transcendence is viewed as a closed circle where Spirit returns to itself as the “Absolute,” having mediated all immediacy (Pippin, 2018). By contrast, Husserl describes an “open teleology” where the telos of reason is an idea of perfection lying at an infinite distance—through infinite crises—which makes philosophy an incompletable “infinite task.” I do not see these two positions as being incompatible, but simply talking at cross purposes.

Ricoeur argues that because human existence is finite (situated in a particular time, culture, and social class), we cannot see the whole truth. Transcendence is thus achieved not by escaping finitude, but by traversing it through detour of interpretation. 

On this point of history, teleology, progress, etc., I think there exists a balance point between the two positions. The first step towards this synthesis is to consider Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics (1981). Ricoeur argues that because human existence is finite (situated in a particular time, culture, and social class), we cannot see the whole truth. Transcendence is thus achieved not by escaping finitude, but by traversing it through detour of interpretation. In his “hermeneutics of suspicion,” symbolic, poetic, and religious language are believed to reveal hidden, transcendent meanings of “the world of the text.” This transcendental movement involves a reader engaging with a text’s “proposal of a world”, an “otherness” that expands the reader’s self-understanding. To my mind, this movement recapitulates Hegel’s logic but tempers it with Merleau-Ponty’s “partial realism.” The result permits us to dispense with any hope of an absolute realization of self-consciousness, but retains a powerful recommendation to see our projected world as always being “read through” some “text” or another.

On a more fine-grained semantic interpretation (such as Robert Brandom’s), this transcendent movement is identified in linguistic representation. Here, normative statuses (meanings) transcend the attitudes of the subjects who institute them and “represented” objects thereby exert a rational constraint that transcends the immediate subjective attitude and its objects. Consequently, it is this transcendence that is made intelligible through recollection (Erinnerung), a retrospective process that gradually reveals a reality (the noumenon) that was implicit all along. If embraced to its ultimate conclusion, I believe his movement of explication holds radical implications of continually permitting us to reflect upon and interrupt onto-normative feedback loops that have constituted any given experience.

Conclusion: The Limits of Transcendence

Though this overview has not aimed to be exhaustive, I think that a couple conclusions can be drawn at this point. The following argument is meant to reveal the limits of the transcendental, whether in the case of the Cartesian I, essences, or even our freedom:

P1. Transcendence involves a process of differentiating (freeing) oneself from or overcoming the limits of a context or concept.

P2. The process of transcendence involves re-cognition / re-imagination of some “relevant” elements of respective contexts.

P3. If transcendence always varies in relation to contextual re-cognition and conceptual imagination, then it is context-dependent and scalar (not absolute).

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C1. Our transcendence or freedom are context-dependent and thus scalar.

C2. If any form of phenomenology posits absolute transcendence (via freedom, individuation of self or eidos, etc.), then the theory is neglecting context-dependence and is thus mistaken.

Taking all of these lessons of transcendence into account brings me to some tentative conclusions. First, the Absolute, just like the Ego, cannot be wholly individuated at any point in history insofar as we lack a view of ourselves within the universe-as-a-whole. Nevertheless, I am inclined to agree with both existentialists and Hegel that there exist some categorical movements (even if they can undergo further refinement), which bring us to apprehend the conditions of our own individuation at any given historical moment.

In the end, transcendence cannot be all-or-nothing; it can be achieved to better or worse degrees of adequacy; and it must be undertaken as a contextually-embedded process, if we are to understand “humanity” an open-ended Concept.

I think that contemporary phenomenology remains of utmost importance for this end, but I doubt that it can achieve its goal of establishing essences if it neglects the hermeneutic feedback loop of seeing ourselves as mediated through innumerable “texts,” “categories,” or “lenses” that shape our worldly enactments. The New England Transcendentalists (Buell, 2006) come to mind as a tradition that—for all their technical confusions regarding the history of philosophical theories—got one point absolutely right: our contextual relation to community and environment is our means of transcendence, rather than something to overcome. In the end, transcendence cannot be all-or-nothing; it can be achieved to better or worse degrees of adequacy; and it must be undertaken as a contextually-embedded process, if we are to understand “humanity” an open-ended Concept.

What, then, is your path of transcendence; where has it taken you thus far; and how might it serve others in the future?

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References

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