Meanings
alternative trans-phenomenal
- especiallynot comparableKantianismOf or pertaining to a process, nature, or realm which cannot be directly experienced using such human faculties as conceptualization or perception by means of the five senses.
Yet, inconsistently but fortunately, Kant does repeatedly refer, in the Critique of Judgment, to a trans-phenomenal realm.
1957, Theodore Meyer Greene, Moral, Aesthetic, and Religious Insight, page 873 more examples
We have said that the distinction between phenomena and the trans-phenomenal is founded upon and interwoven with the distinction in our conscious experience, or in the nature and process of knowledge, between sense and the intelligible, or, better, the spiritual conditions of sense, or between "consciousness," the sensible or "felt" and particular product, and "self-consciousness," the universal and conditioning process.
1894, George Sylvester Morris, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Critical Exposition, page 193But over what transphenomenal imperfections does the immortal soul continue to triumph on and on and on? Is Kant also postulating transphenomenal inclinations?
1980, Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Discovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel, page 120Now even that basic finite distinction of a subject which knows and an object which is known, that apparent essential for human knowledge, fades into a more ^([sic]) transphenomenal or transcendental wisdom.
1984, Frank R. Podgorski, Ego—Revealer, Concealer: A Key to Yoga
Origin
- Germantransphänomenal
- Englishtransphenomenal
Probably from German transphänomenal
More words from German
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
transphenomenal. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/transphenomenal
“transphenomenal.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/transphenomenal. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “transphenomenal,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/transphenomenal.
Source: transphenomenal on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.