What does civilization, religion, science, philosophy, and morality all have in common? Transcendence.
Yet where are we transcending to?
Why should we transcend to anything?
What is transcendence?
Why should ourselves be transcended into anything? Can we transcend? If so, how?
If not, then why bother?
I don’t see how science and philosophy inherently transcend anything.
Science is just explanations of the world under a specific context of evidential procedures.
Philosophy is a word game that utilizes reason.
Exactly. So then what is transcendence? 
Illusion?
When I think of humanity transcending anything, the only thing that I can imagine is a person dying to transcend life. Other than that, I can’t think of anything.
Reality transcends our mistaken conceptions about it.
Pure transcendence, in the sense of moving beyond something, of wiping it off the chalkboard for good, is impossible. The transcended, the identity of having been pushed below, is produced at the same time as the transcendent, the identity of having pressed away from the ground: you cannot transcend without something to move beyond, and you cannot be transcended without something that has moved passed you. Their identities are dependent on one another, then, so the transcendent always drags the transcended along with it. No matter how far away from transcended the transcendent moves, it shall always carry a residual of the transcended, at least (the hermit in the mountain may move beyond society, but has only acquired his identity through contrast with society). Therefore, all one can do, to borrow a locution from Roland Barthes, is “play off” the ground from which you wish to emerge. This is thus the closest to pure transcendence one can get, and I think, Joker, that it raises problems for the freedom you idealize.
lol joker. i forsee a very large debate over this but… it is our inherent duty to transcend in anyway we can.
here come the objections ><
Duty??? By whose authority is it your duty to transcend anything… God’s?
well it’s not my duty its just my agenda. it’s my modus operandi.
if you exist for the sole purpose of comforting yourself best until death then why not commit suicide?
if you hope to achieve nothing then what are you doing?
transcendence is something to be idealized given you have a will to survive.
without the will to survive you might as well be dead
choices are thrust upon us and we are left with decisions like left or right.
theres no point in making the choice if you don’t care which is the right one. you’d be a waste of brain matter.
even if the path you choose is only right for you, or wrong to many. you do what you must do to survive.
even if you are wrong in your reasoning of action, you do what you think you must.
actions that are outside the realm of a must can only be considered bonus’s.
any rational man will try to best effect any action he does, if not than he or she is mentally slow or lazy.
if you are a rational agent and you want to live, then you had best try for transcendence. if you don’t why are you on this website? furthermore why don’t you commit suicide? have you found some sort of way to deal with the vanity of mans existence you are not sharing? <---- (this last comment is gonna cause me some grief)
I don’t know about that one… 
100% true, not only that, you will die.
Yes choices are thrust upon us, but no we don’t always care. Why is not caring a waste of brain matter?
I’d say that the rational man will try to best make sense out of his actions and the world. It’s the reasonable man that wishes to affect his actions the best.
What kind of transcendence are you talking about? I don’t believe there’s anymore to life than what is already here. The problem with humanity is that we’re ignorant, yet we’re still thinking and evolving using our minds and bodies. ‘Transcendence’ to me sounds like a delusional ideology. Then again, I do believe in enlightenment, but I don’t know what connection to transcendence that has… I’ll have to think about that one. My compulsion is to say enlightenment both transcends the average state of humankind while also regressing to our animalistic nature and instincts.
lol. firstly to defend my argument reasonability is a component of rationality, or vice versa, either way it makes no difference.
you are attaching transcendence to a narrow definition of some sort of divine essence. Transcendence can mean "achieving a state of affairs beyond, and superior to an old state of affairs.
where does it say that the word transcendence is exclusive 
It seems exclusive, because who’s to judge what’s superior to the old state of affairs?
Remember, my beliefs state that I don’t think humans have done anything exceedingly special compared to other animals… yet. We’re still just human beasts in my eyes.
the reasonable man is the judge of course. and when you wheel this conversation back to why does it have meaning, i answer that we won’t know until we find out
So if the reasonable man is the judge, then transcendence is exclusive?
Here’s one for ya…
Transcendental Arguments: Genuine and Spurious
Jaakko Hintikka
Noûs, Vol. 6, No. 3. (Sep., 1972), pp. 274-281.
Stable URL:
links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4 … 0.CO%3B2-E
Transcendental Arguments:
Genuine and Spurious
JAAKKO HINTIKKA
ACADEMY OF FINLAND
The notion of transcendental argument was brought to
philosophical prominence by Kant. Hence the first order of business
in any discussion of such arguments is to try to see what Kant
understood by the term.
The thesis of this brief note is that the peculiar sense in which
Kant talked of transcendental arguments has been largely overlooked
in recent discussion.
What, then, is this sense ? We perhaps begin to appreciate it if
we compare some of different things Kant says of his philosophical
method and of the meaning of the term “transcendental”. Let us
listen to Kant:
I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much
with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects insofar as
this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori (A 11 = B 25).
What, then, is possible for us to know of objects a priori
according to Kant, and what is peculiar to the “mode of knowledge”
in question? An explicit answer is easily forthcoming, for Kant
says that
. . .we are adopting as our new method of thought. . . that we can
know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into them (B xviii).l
This pronouncement, and others like it, show that Kant was a
link in a long but in our modern days almost forgotten tradition
which may be called the tradition of genuine knowledge as maker’s
knowledge. The idea which underlies this tradition has many
variants, but what is common to them is the claim that we can have
certain especially valuable kinds of knowledge of what we have
ourselves brought about, and of such things only. For hob be^,^
an earlier member of the tradition, this privileged kind of knowledge
TRrlNSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS: GENUINE AND SPURIOUS 275
is demonstrative knowledge. For Kant, it is synthetic knowledge
a priori. In studying it, we must realize that “reason has insight
only into that which it produces after a plan of its own” (B xiii).
This is also the most distinctive aspect of Kant’s “Copernican
Revolution” in philosophy.
In using the term “transcendental”, Kant was basically
emphasizing this active aspect of our “cognitive faculty”. This
dynamic aspect is brought out by Kant when he says that “the
word ‘transcendental’ . . .with me never means a reference of our
knowledge to things, but only to the cognitive faculty” (Prolegomena,
p. 294 of the Academy edition).
Thus a transcendental argument is for Kant one which shows
the possibility of a certain type of synthetic knowledge a priori
by showing how it is due to those activities of ours by means of
which the knowledge in question is obtained. This is, I take it, what
Kant means by saying that a transcendental proposition “makes
possible the very experience which is its own ground of proof.”
From this point of view, much of what recently has been
said of so-called transcendental arguments is simply beside the
point-or at least un-Kantian. For instance, Strawson’s argument
in Individuals for the primacy of material bodies as the basic
particulars3 is not a transcendental argument in Kant’s sense,
although Strawson so labels it. The reason is simply that the special
role of these basic particulars according to Strawson has nothing
to do with any constructive activity of our “faculty of knowledge.”
Strawson argues that without material bodies as basic particulars we
could not have the kind of conceptual framework of re-identification
which we in fact have. He does not argue, however, that this framework
is “produced by reason after a plan of its own.”
The contrast with Kant’s own main arguments should be clear.
Perhaps the clearest instance is his argument that we can anticipate
the existence of particulars with certain characteristics in the way we
do in mathematical arguments only if these characteristics have
been put into all particulars by our~elvesS.i~n ce Kant believed that
the way in which we come to know particulars is sense-perception,
he thus arrived at his theory of the basic mathematical relationships,
which he identified with spatial and temporal ones, as being imposed
on all particulars by our faculty of sense-perception. Then spatial
and temporal relations are found in all experience (the “ground of
proof” of Kant’s argument) because they are due to the process
through which this experience comes about, and hence in a sense
make this experience possible.
I’ll send you the rest if you want it.
yep to the lucky or innately intelligent, you don’t expect a prisoner to be transcendental do you?
I shall read this piece in full sometime in the near future smears, as i am bogged down with reading as it is.
its interesting that some of the ideas i come up with (alone i hope) turn out to be widely known. it seems i feel special in the fact i conform 
then again when i was a kid i used to tease my friends that we are but mere fungi on the earth and like biological robots we have no choice, no say in any action we do. what we do, we would have done anyway- determinism
What mistaken conceptions?
In the beginning of time where man was a primitive beast living amongst nature there was nothing to transcend over as he was a beast much like all the others.
What supplied the notions of transcendence to primitive man? Religion.
Since science and philosophy came to be historically a extension of religion they too have the same assumptions that man must transcend to some higher dimension.
Why must man transcend to anything? This is a important question for this thread.
Duty? What duty? Duty to God? 
This right here is an example of how religion forever changed the biology of man as well as his social being.
Why must man transcend over his basic form of living which involves just eating, reproduction, excretion, sleeping and dying like all the other creatures that surrounds us?
Why must man transcend into anything which involves never ending labor and vicious toil?
In ancient times this was the angle that the conventional priesthoods gave to primitive man living amongst nature which eventually constructed civilization by blind faiths and hysterias of transcendence.
If ancient man only knew what the priesthoods was selling his children and future generations into if he could see this present future. He would of most likely constructed a band of warriors slaughtering the priests into oblivion for their absurdities. But alas we can’t change the past!