Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/42

 TRANSEPT

18

TRANSEPT

transcendent and transcendental to refer to those ele- ments or factors in our knowledge which do not come from experience, but are known a priori. Empirical philosophy is, therefore, a philosophy based on experi- ence alone and adhering to the realm of experience in obedience to Hume's maxim, '"Tis impossible to go beyond experience. " Transcendental philosophy, on the contrary, goes beyond experience, and considers that philosophical speculation is concerned chiefly, if not solely, with those things which lie beyond ex- perience.

(4) Kant himself was convinced that, for the theo- retical reason, the transcendental reality, the thing- in-itself, is unknown and unknowable. Therefore, he defined the task of philosophy to consist in the exam- ination of knowledge for the purpose of determining the a priori elements, in the .systematic enumeration of these elements, or forms, and the determination of the rules for their legitimate application to the data of experience. Ultra-empirical reality, he taught, is to be known only by the practical reason. Thus, his philosophy is critical transcendentalUm. Thus, too, he left to his successors the task of bridging over the chasm between the theoretical and the practical rea- son. This task they accomplished in various ways, eliminating, transforming, or adapting the transcen- dent reality outside us, the thing-in-itself, and estab- lishing in this way different transcendentalisms in place of the critical transcendentalism of Kant.

(.5) Fichte introduced Egoistic Transcendentalism. The subject, he taught, or the Ego, has a practical as well as a theoretical side. To develop its practical Bide along the line of duty, obligation, and right, it is obliged to posit the non-Ego. In this way, the thing-in-itself as opposed to the subject, is eliminated, because it is a creation of the Ego, and, therefore, all transcendental reality is contained in self. / am I, the original identity of self with itself, is the expres- sion of the highest metaphysical tnith.

(6) Schelling, addressing himself to the same task, developed Transcendental Absolutism. He brought to the problems of philosophy a highly spiritual im- aginativeness and a scientific insight into nature which were lacking in Kant, the critic of knowledge, and Fichte, the exponent of romantic personalism. He taught that the transcendental reality is neither subject nor object, but an Absolute which is so inde- terminate that it may be said to be neither nature nor spirit. Yet the Absolute is, in a sense, potentially both the one and the other. For, from it, by gravity, light, and organization, is derived spirit, which slum- bers in nature, but reaches consciousness of self in the highest natural organization, man. There is here a hint of development which was brought out explicitly by Hegel.

(7) Hegel introduced Idealistic Transcendentalism. He taught that reality is not an unknowable thing in itself, nor the subject merely, nor an absolute of in- difference, but an absolute Idea, Spirit, or Concept (Bejn^), whose essence is development {das Werdcn), and which becomes in succession object and subject, nature and spirit, being and essence, the soul, law, the state, art, science, religion, and philosophy.

In all these various meanings there is preserved a generic resemblance to the original signification of the term transcendentalism. The transcendentalists one and all, dwell in the regions beyond experience, and, if they do not condernn experience as untrust- worthy, at lesist they value ex-perience only in so far as it is elevated, sublimated, and transformed by the application to it of transcendental i)rinciples. The fundamental epistoinologic'd error of Kant, that whatever is universal and necessary cannot come froin experience, runs all through the transceiuli'iilalist philosophy, and it is on epistemological grounds that the transcendentalists are to be met. This was the stand taken in Catholic circles, and there, with few

exceptions, the doctrines of the transcendentalists met with a hostile reception. The exceptions were Franz Baader (1765-1841), Johann Frohschammer (1821-1893), and Anton Gunther (178.5-1863), who, in their attempt to "reconcile" Cathohc dogma with modern philosophical opinion, were influenced by the transcendentalists and overstepped the boundaries of orthodoxy. It may without unfairness be laid to the charge of the German transcendentalists that their disregard for ex-perience and common sense is largely accountable for the discredit into which metaphysics has fallen in recent years.

New England transcendentalism, sometimes called the Concord School of Philosophy, looks to William EUery Channing (1780-1842) as its founder. Its principal representatives are Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Theodore Parker (1810-1860), Frederick Henry Hedge (lSO.5-1890), George Ripley (1802-1880), and Margaret Fuller (1810-18.50). It had its inception in the foundrition of the Transcendental Club in 1836. The chief influences discernible in its literary output are German philosophy, French sociology, and the re- action against the formalism of Calvinistic theology. Its sociological and economic theories were tested in the famous Brook Farm (1841), with which the names just mentioned and those of several other dis- tinguished .\mericans were associated.

For the history of Gprman transcendentalism see Ueberweg, Hist, of Philosophy, tr. Morris (New York, 1892); Falckenbero, Hist, of Modern Philosophy, tr. .\rmstronq (New York, 1893); Turner, Hist, of Philosophy (Boston, 1903) ; Stockl, Gesch. der Phil. (Mainz, 1888). For New England transcendentalism see Frothingham. Transcendentalism in New England (New York, 187(5); CoDMAN, Brook Farm (Boston, 1S94).

William Turner.

Transept, a rectangular space inserted between the apse and nave in the early Christian basilica. It sprang from the need of procuring sufficient space for the increased number of clergy and for the proper celebration of the service. The length of the rec- tangle either equals the entire breadth of the nave, as in Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Croce at Rome, or it exceeds this breadth more or less, so that the transept extends bej'ond the walls of the nave. The transept, though, is not peculiar to the Roman ba- silica, as was for a long time believed; it is also to be found in the churches of Asia Minor, as at Sagalas- sos. Beside this first form, in which the apse was directly united with the transept, there were to be found in Asia Minor and Sicily, even in the early era, a number of churches of a second form. These were formerly considered to belong to the medieval period, because they were not fuUy de- veloped until the Middle Ages. This is the cross- shaped or cruciform church, over the origin of which a violent literary controversy raged for a long time. In the cruciform design the transept is organically developed from the structure. It contains three squares which in height and breadth correspond to that of the main nave. Beyond the central square, called the bay, and connected with it is a fourth square, the choir, and beyond, and connected with the choir, is the apse; in this way the cruciform shape of the church is produced. The transept generally terminates towards the north and south in a straight line. Still there are a number of churches, especially in Germany, that end in a .semicircular or triple conch shape. Strzygowski thinks he has found the model of this style of structure in the Roman imperial palace; this form of transept is found in as early a church as that of the Virgin at Bethlehem erected by Constantine.

.\ favourite method in the Romanesque style was to construct small :ip.ses opening into the transept to the right and left of the choir. In the churches of the Cistercians and of the mendicant orders these small apses were transformed at a later date into