Transcendentals

Transcendental Attributes

• Transcendental Attributes are perfections which all things share in, in virtue of their being.
• They are ‘convertible’ with being – each is a thing’s being in relation either to itself or other beings.
  • Being – the reality of a thing
    • Essence: what it is
    • Act of Existing: what makes it a real thing
  • One – the thing as undivided
  • Good – the thing as an object of desire
    • The perfection of its own being
    • The perfection of the being of another
  • True – the thing as an object of knowledge; the reality to which a mind conforms
  • Thing – being what it is (essence considered in itself)
  • Something – being other than everything else
  • Beautiful – perfection as an object of knowledge
• Trancendentals are like Platonic Forms in that
  • they are shared in by material things more or less completely
  • they are the foundation of the reality and intelligibility of what shares in them (which is everything that is)

• Transcendental Good (as Metaphysical Perfection)
  • Most obvious Transcendental Attribute in observable reality from which the Fourth Way proceeds (as another a posteriori proof)
  • Defined as ‘what each thing (truly) desires’ (should): the due good, or duly desirable
  • Not arbitrary or relativistic, because convertible with being
  • Each thing’s goodness is the perfection of its own being (metaphysical perfection)
    • A thing’s good is what is or contributes to its functioning well
    • This well-functioning is determined by the sort of thing it is, i.e., its nature or essence: what it is.
  • Incidentally, evil is the privation or lack of (a due) good.
    • Not every lack or privation is evil: unseeing rocks are not called blind, and do not suffer an evil.
    • Only what is supposed to see (and doesn’t) is called blind and suffers an evil

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