transcendence

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Otto van Veen , emblem "What no eye has seen and no ear has heard" (1 Cor 2,9)

In philosophy , theology and religious studies , transcendence (from Latin transcendentia "to exceed") denotes a relationship between objects and a certain area of ​​possible experience or the epitome of this relationship.

As transcendent what outside or beyond the range of possible experience, in particular the range of normal sense applies, perception is and is not dependent on him. The idea of ​​“exceeding” contained in the term means above all a transgression of the finite world of experience on its divine ground , more rarely a self- transgression of the divine towards the creation of the world. The complementary term “ immanent ” denotes that which is present in finite things, which does not transcend them and therefore can be explained without recourse to the transcendent.

In addition to this ontological juxtaposition of an immanent, ephemeral and a transcendent, eternal-infinite reality, an epistemological delimitation is often made, according to which the transcendent exceeds the realm of limited human knowledge. According to a theory and terminology that was developed in the early thirteenth century, principles such as the good , the true , the beautiful and the like apply to all beings as such; they therefore “exceed” the Aristotelian categories and are therefore called “ transcendentalies ”. In connection with these medieval terms, the pair of terms of immanence and transcendence is used more specifically in many contexts, including as an interpretation of the relation of principles and principles in various contexts of different epochs and cultures that can be described in terms of the history of philosophy and religion.

Concept history

The Latin feminine noun transcendentia is attested in antiquity , but not in a philosophical or religious context; originally it only denotes a transgression or a transition. The associated verb transcendere “to exceed” was also used in the ancient world to mean “to exceed”. The church father Augustine (354-430) gives Greek expressions from Neoplatonic literature such as anabainein "ascending" in Latin with the verb transcendere or its participle transcendens "exceeding". The transcendere is over for him below the movement on a path of knowledge on which one of a deeper level of reality to a higher. In another context he states that God “transcends” every mutable creature (transcendat) .

In the Middle Ages the feminine noun transcendentia was not in use, but the participle transcendens was used , and since the 13th century the neuter plural transcendentia “die übersteigenden (things)”. What is meant are provisions that “go beyond” the Aristotelian categories, that is, are not restricted to one of them. According to the scholastics, the core of the transcendentia was formed by the terms “being”, “one”, “true” and “good”.

The transcendentia as a feminine Latin noun with the meaning "transcendence" (God) in today's sense is attested from the early 17th century in Catholic and Protestant theological literature.

philosophy

General

In the history of philosophy , the term transcendence has been used in different ways, often with religious ideas. What all meanings have in common is that an act or process of crossing a boundary that separates two areas that are fundamentally different in nature is assumed. The concept formation is based on a spatial scheme, but the terms “area” and “border” are not to be understood spatially but spiritually; each of the two areas is characterized and defined by the specific possibilities of knowledge and experience that are given in it.

If someone makes an experience that does not appear to be possible or in principle not expressible and explainable in the context of his usual area, or if he in conclusion arrives at the assumption of a reality beyond this area, he can deduce from this - provided that there is no error - he has exceeded the limit of his area through experience or in his mind and "entered" another area. This other area is then transcendent from his perspective.

This presupposes that there are two such sharply demarcated areas and that it is possible for a viewer to take a perspective from which he can recognize the existence of both areas and the border between them. This hypothesis, in turn, presupposes that the viewer does not belong exclusively to one of the areas, but has a skill that gives him access to the other or at least enables him to recognize that the border and beyond it the other area also exist. From this arises the basic problem of the philosophical models that assume transcendence: the question of how the assumption of a fundamental difference between the two areas is compatible with the assumption that from one of the areas the existence of the other can be recognized or even the boundary can be crossed. This question can only be answered if, apart from the radical difference in certain respects, a unity of the two areas, which allows the development of the coordinates for the process of crossing, is assumed.

The theories that affirm a transcendent reality usually start from an ontological relationship of dependence. They postulate that the non-transcendent realm (the usual “whereabouts” of man) owes its existence and all of its content to the transcendent realm, while the transcendent realm in no way depends on the non-transcendent. The transcendent realm is the conditioning, the other is the conditioned. Thus the transcendent area is the higher one in an ontological hierarchy.

The problem of mediation arises here. The question is which circumstance or factor mediates between the two areas and thus enables the non-transcendent to be influenced by the transcendent and a knowledge of the existence (and possibly also the nature) of the transcendent from the non-transcendent.

Antiquity

In Platonism , the direction of ancient philosophy founded by Plato , it is assumed that, in addition to the area of ​​sensually perceptible and changeable individual things, there is also an area of ​​unchangeable ideas that can only be grasped purely spiritually. According to Plato's doctrine of ideas, the ideas are not mere representations in the human mind, but form an independent, objectively existing metaphysical reality. The intelligible realm of ideas is the cause of the existence of the realm of sense objects, which includes not only material objects but also events and actions. The ideas are the eternal spiritual archetypes, the sense objects are their images and as such are necessarily imperfect and defective. Since the images are fundamentally different from the original images and there is an ontological relationship of dependence between them, the ideas are transcendent from the point of view of the realm of the sense objects.

The placement takes place according to the principle of participation ( Methexis ). As images, the individual things partake of their archetypes, each thing in several ideas and in every idea a multitude of things. Every thing is constituted through its various participatory relationships. Participation is the link between the constituting spiritual and the constituted sensual realm. Basically man has access to both areas because his soul consists of essentially different parts. With regard to its immortal part, it is immaterial and eternal, so it has characteristics characteristic of the area of ​​ideas and is at home there. Hence, she can recognize the ideas. The lower parts of the soul, on the other hand, show features of the area of ​​the sense objects and serve to interact with this area.

Since, according to the Platonic doctrine, the sense things are made by the ideas into what they are, and the totality of the sensually perceptible phenomena is traced back to an influence on the part of the ideas, the ideas are "present" as archetypes in their images, the sense objects “(Immanent). Immanence means “the presence of parts, effects or outflows of transcendence in non-transcendent reality”. Without this presence, according to Plato's theory of ideas, there would be no sense things. In ancient Platonism the idea of ​​participation expresses what is now called immanence; a term “immanence” did not exist back then.

The concept of participation is intended to make the connection between ideas and things in the sensory world understandable. However, it leads to a number of problems which are discussed in Plato's Dialogue Parmenides , but not resolved. For the time being, it is not possible to answer the question of the nature of the participation of the phenomenally given in the ideas without contradiction.

Aristotle , who rejected the theory of ideas of his teacher Plato, was of the opinion that the problem of mediating between the two areas could not be solved by the idea of ​​participation. The expression “participation” is useless for a philosophical argument, it is only an empty word and a poetic metaphor , the meaning of which Plato had not investigated. So there is no mediation. Plato's transcendent area of ​​ideas presents itself as a separate world without reference to the sensory world; there was an unbridgeable abyss between the two areas. In reality there are no such ideas as separate substances, only the forms of the sense objects which are inseparably connected with their matter. Despite this rejection of Platonic metaphysics, Aristotle did not renounce the assumption of a transcendent domain. He assumed an “unmoved mover” as the origin of all movement. The immobile mover, whose existence he considered necessary, he regarded as a separate substance. So he accepted a transcendent principle.

middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, the term “transcendence” was not yet common. Christian philosophers were familiar with the underlying ideas of overcoming, crossing a boundary and the existence of an area outside the normal world of experience.

The concept of transcendence of the late antique and medieval Christian thinkers was predominantly shaped by the ideas of the Platonic tradition. Neoplatonism played a central role in conveying ancient philosophical ideas to the Middle Ages . Although little of the literature of the ancient Neo-Platonists was accessible in the Middle Ages, medieval scholars knew the basic ideas of Neo-Platonism from the works of the highly respected late antique church writers. In the Middle Ages, the authority of two particularly respected and at the same time particularly strongly influenced by Neoplatonism late ancient authors was decisive: Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita .

Medieval philosophers took over the doctrine of the Church Father Augustine that man must transcend his own spirit ( transcendere ) in order to arrive at the actual being, the being of God, which transcends every perishable creature. In the Augustinian way of thinking, the idea of ​​a gradual transcendence is connected with this step-by-step transcendence. Although Augustine shared the common conviction of the Church Fathers that God was inexpressible, that his essence (Greek ousia , Latin substantia or essentia ) could not be expressed in words, he did thematize the questions and problems associated with the idea of ​​an absolute transcendence (even beyond being) Not.

In the doctrine of the late antique Christian Neo-Platonist Pseudo-Dionysius, on the other hand, the problem of the absolute transcendence of God forms a central element. Pseudo-Dionysius problematizes the unreflective assumption that statements about God's properties are “true” in the sense of an analogy to the corresponding human properties known from everyday experience. He believes that such properties known from normal experience cannot be attributed to God because they do not do justice to his transcendence. Since they are therefore not valid statements about his being, they must be negated. According to the teaching of Pseudo-Dionysius, however, the claim that they are really correct statements about God's nature cannot be made for the negations either. Therefore they must also be negated. Only through this last negation, with which one transcends every kind of definition or designation, is the decisive step taken in the approach to the divine reality: God's namelessness is identified with the "ineffable name", which is the basis of all names and designations as such all names united. The positive statements are recognized as true by Pseudo-Dionysius, but they do not refer to God's absolutely transcendent nature, but only to his effect.

According to Thomas Aquinas , the absolutely transcendent is the subject of theology. Johannes Duns Scotus defines metaphysics as transcendental science ( scientia transcendens ) for the first time , referring to a partially incorrect etymology : metaphysica is composed of the Greek meta (Latin trans ) and ycos , which he incorrectly reproduces in Latin as scientia (science); the object of metaphysics is the transcendent things ( transcendentia ).

Early modern age

For Kant , the transcendent is that which lies beyond human experience and of which no theoretical knowledge is possible. In the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant examines the limits of what can be grasped by human cognitive faculties. These are determined by the “conditions of possibility” of human experience. In contrast to the transcendent, that which underlies and precedes the capacity for knowledge is the transcendental . What lies beyond this capacity for knowledge, the transcendent, cannot be the object of knowledge, but only of belief. Kant says: "So I had to keep knowledge in order to have room for faith." Transcendent - and thus merely regulative ideas - are for Kant z. B. the ideas of God, freedom and eternal life. These ideas are not nonsensical, but one can only accept them, one can only "postulate" that there is God, freedom or an immortal soul. The purpose of the critique of pure reason is that “materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-spirited unbelief, enthusiasm and superstition, which can become generally harmful, ultimately also idealism and skepticism, which are more dangerous to schools and difficult to publicize can pass over, even the root can be cut off. "

When one has described the limits of knowledge, that is, when one knows what can be scientifically explained, the questions remain for Kant about the transcendent, about what lies in the “beyond the world of the senses” from which human reason cannot escape. That is why he states in the “Resolution” at the end of the Critique of Practical Reason : “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and more persistently the reflection occupies itself with it: the starry sky above me and the moral law in me."

19th century

That which mediates the knower with the horizon of his knowledge has been approached from different sides in the history of post-Kantian philosophy. First of all, in Hegel's idealism, there is history which, in the dialectic of its development, creates the continuum in which the understanding comes to itself through objects and is thus mediated with itself and the world.

Sören Kierkegaard uses the term transcendence to criticize Hegel's philosophy as a philosophy of immanence . By asserting the immanence of everything real in consciousness, Hegel denies the transcendent. Kierkegaard uses transcendence to describe the level of religion, which is radically different from science and which is only accessible through faith.

20th and 21st centuries

Building on Hegel's concept, Heidegger sees the understanding of human existence and its struggle for self-understanding as the mediator between the knower, the objects of his knowledge and the horizon of human knowledge that makes this possible in the first place.

“Horizon” in this context means anticipating something that makes the process of knowledge possible in the first place. This is precisely not the object of knowledge itself, but that which is always set with every knowledge as a condition of possibility. By reflecting on the conditions of its realization, philosophy makes this horizon, which is always implicitly set, the object of its investigation. For example, truth is always included as a horizon understood in this way, regardless of whether the statement made is true or false, the truth was intended or not, the deed is good or bad. This is illustrated by the liar's paradox , according to which no one can truthfully claim that he always lies because he must claim to tell the truth in at least one case, and so truth is the transcendental condition of the possibility of even the intended falsehood of this statement.

Karl Jaspers used the term transcendence in three different ways:

  1. The actual transcendence, which he also calls the transcendence of all transcendence. For him it is the real being. It is at the same time the encompassing par excellence or the encompassing of the encompassing.
  2. The transcendence of all immanent ways of the encompassing (existence, consciousness in general, spirit, world): “We transcend to every [immanent] encompassing, i. H. we transcend definite objectivity in order to perceive what encompasses it; It would therefore be possible to call every form of the [immanent] encompassing a transcendence, namely in relation to everything tangible tangible in this encompassing. "
  3. The transcendence as a synonym for God, so u. a. in The Philosophical Faith in the Face of Revelation (1962) and in Chiffren der Transzendenz (1970, Lecture Basel SS 1961).

For Jean-Paul Sartre, transcendence is a fundamental human characteristic. The crossing of the ego, in which the human being is not included in himself, but is permanently present in a human universe. Based on the Greek philosopher Plato and his theory of ideas, we conceive the existence of the “good in itself”, which reveals itself to us as an indescribable insight that can be grasped through the ways and means of transcendence.

According to Niklas Luhmann , transcendence as an indication of direction refers to something beyond a boundary. It is a mental transgression of immanence. Its specific function lies in giving meaning, so “that communication is always religious when it regards the immanent from the point of view of transcendence.” The transcendent, for its part, can only be viewed from the perspective of immanence. This results in a paradoxical structure of communication which Luhmann sees as symbolized in the double view of Christ, who is immanent in the world as the Son of God and transcendent as God himself.

Ernst Tugendhat explains that in post-Kantian philosophy the metaphysical idea of ​​a transcendence of God was replaced by that of an anthropological “immanent transcendence”, by the concept of a striving of people that points beyond them. This can be found in Nietzsche , who, with the determination of the death of God, in order not to persist in nihilism , developed the alternative concept of the will to power for man , the realization of which by the superman and the revaluation of all values promises an ascent. Tugendhat, on the other hand, rejects Heidegger's definition of transcendence as the difference between being and being as a dead end. “Man cannot be satisfied with the surface of things and has to penetrate into it. Thus a going beyond oneself is constituted, which is not, as with Nietzsche, a merely quantitative growth in the power of the individual, and also not, as in the epistemology of the time and Heidegger, a movement between subject and object, between man and being, but a transcending of the appearance and the surface in the direction of the depth of things. ”The increasing depth is achieved by asking for reasons, with respect and attention to reality. For Tugendhat, transcendence consists “in increasing one's opening to reality and in learning to do something good and better.” Adorno understood transcendence to mean breaking out of the prison of concepts and reality by means of immanent criticism: “Already joined in the simple identifying judgment the pragmatic, nature-dominating element is a utopian. A should be what it is not yet. Such hope is contradictingly linked to that in which the form of the predicative identity is broken. For this, the philosophical tradition had the word ideas. They are neither χωρις nor empty sound, but negative signs. The untruth of all attained identity is the wrong shape of truth. Ideas live in the caves between what things claim to be and what they are. Utopia would be above identity and above contradiction , a togetherness of the different. " (Adorno - Negative Dialectic)

Eastern philosophy

The Buddhism knows transcendent Buddhas , as Adibuddha be called (original Buddha). Transcendent Buddhas are timeless and always present. They belong to the Dharmakaya , the level of duality-free, at the same time transcendent and immanent absolute truth and reality, which defines the essence of all Buddhas. An analogy to the western concept of transcendence is nirvana in Buddhism , which forms the opposite of everything that is given, to samsara and, in some variants of Buddhism , can be achieved meditatively by letting go of all worldly ties in highest contemplation . In other schools it is the unborn or non-existent as a borderline concept that people enter into after their death. (see also: Trikaya ). As a negation, the transcendent is not to be equated with a positively perceived eternal and encompassing (Jaspers).

In Hinduism , the Brahman , the cosmic world soul, characterizes the immutable, infinite, immanent and transcendent reality, which represents the basis of all matter, energy, time, space, being and everything above the universe. The Trimurti and other subordinate deities are just different manifestations of the unity of the one God. Redemption, liberation or enlightenment ( Moksha ) is the last, ultimate of the four goals in life in Hinduism. With Tirtha fords or river crossings are referred to as places of transcendence in Hindu texts and rituals, which have become places of pilgrimage in religious practice. Through asceticism in Vedic practice one can withdraw from the immanence of the world and attain transcendence.

There is also a transcendent background in Confucianism . So it is said, "The noble one has a (holy) fear of three things: he stands in awe of the will of God, he stands in awe of great men, he stands in awe of the words of the saints (of ancient times)." Here is a superordinate “mission from heaven” (天命 tian ming), which calls the noble to a special fulfillment of duty. In Confucianism there is no reference to the hereafter beyond heaven as an abstract impersonal God. Instead, a special value is seen in educating people in the (divine) traditions. In Daoism, the Dao is the fundamental principle of the world, the transcendent from which the cosmos and the order of things arose. Since the things of the world, the opposites of yin and yang, emerged from the Dao, it is at the same time immanence.

Judaism and Christianity

In contrast to the mythological religion of the Greeks, in which the gods are immanent in the world order and therefore only have a relative transcendence, the Jewish God as Creator has an absolute transcendence from the beginning. Satan, on the other hand, is only a creature from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Seen as a mythical deity, he is also part of the world and thus possesses an immanent transcendence.

Christianity is an expansion of the Jewish faith to include all believers and thus to all of humanity, but in many ways continues the Old Testament tradition of thought. God remains the almighty creator God ( Acts 14.15–17  LUT ). However, through the addition of the teaching of the resurrection ( 1 Cor 15.42-50  LUT ) and the last judgment (cf. 1 Cor 3.10-15  LUT , Mt 25.31-46  LUT ), human existence is now abolished until death and the human being receives the possibility of an access to eternal life (cf. 1 Cor 3,10–15  LUT ). “For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, is revealed, then you also will appear with him in glory. "( Col. 3.3-4  LUT ) The transcendence of God also are Christ and the Holy Spirit transcendent because with God the Father , form a unit.

From early church thinking up to modern times, the Christian faith included the idea of ​​a God working in the world. The secularization in the Enlightenment and the progress of the sciences have continued to dissolve this picture. Enlightenment gives "insight into the unavailable meaningful conditions of our existence". These dimensions of creatureliness, unavailability and the constitutive non-objectifiability of God open up the perspective of a humane life, dignity, freedom and fallibility. "Living in practical recognition of the transcendence of the world of others and myself is a prerequisite for all reasonable common practice." The question of God, of meaning and of the absolute is reflected on anew. "The practical sense of the constitutive connection of negativity and transcendence is articulated in Christian terms in the message of the incarnation of God, of God's death and of the community remaining in love." In this way, transcendence is preserved in immanence. Abstract principles like the principle of hope in Ernst Bloch or the principle of responsibility in Hans Jonas substitute the absolute and thus become the key to a “reappropriation of the alienated meaning of transcendence”.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: transcendent  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. Peter GW Glare (Ed.): Oxford Latin Dictionary , Oxford 1982, p. 1961.
  2. Abraham P. Bos: Immanence and Transcendence . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 17, Stuttgart 1996, Sp. 1041-1092, here: 1043f.
  3. Jan A. Aertsen: Transcendental. II. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 10, Basel 1998, Sp. 1360–1365, here: 1360.
  4. ^ Ulrich G. Leinsle: Transcendental. IV. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 10, Basel 1998, Sp. 1372-1376, here: 1373f.
  5. See also Klaus Müller: Transzendenz . In: Petra Kolmer, Armin G. Wildfeuer (eds.): New Handbook of Philosophical Basic Concepts, Volume 3, Freiburg 2011, pp. 2232–2244, here: 2232f .; Christian Danz: Immanence / Transcendence . In: Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Philosophie , Volume 2, Hamburg 2010, pp. 1079-1083, here: 1079.
  6. Klaus Müller: Transcendence . In: Petra Kolmer, Armin G. Wildfeuer (ed.): New Handbook of Basic Philosophical Concepts, Volume 3, Freiburg 2011, pp. 2232–2244, here: 2232.
  7. Christian Danz: Immanence / Transcendence . In: Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Philosophie , Volume 2, Hamburg 2010, pp. 1079-1083, here: 1079.
  8. See Veronika Roth, Christian Schäfer : Teilhabe / Participation (metochê, methexis) . In: Christian Schäfer (Ed.): Platon-Lexikon. Term dictionary on Plato and the Platonic tradition , Darmstadt 2007, pp. 277–282.
  9. Abraham P. Bos: Immanence and Transcendence . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 17, Stuttgart 1996, Sp. 1041-1092, here: 1045.
  10. For the discussion of the Methexis concept in Parmenides see Christoph Ziermann: Platon's negative dialectic. Würzburg 2004, pp. 37-66, 386-418; Franz von Kutschera : Plato's “Parmenides” , New York 1995, pp. 24-29, 37-44, 58-64, 137-140; Francesco Fronterotta: ΜΕΘΕΧΙΣ , Pisa 2001, pp. 183-314.
  11. Aristotle: Metaphysik 987b7-14, 991a20-22, 1079b24-26. Cf. Francesco Fronterotta: ΜΕΘΕΧΙΣ , Pisa 2001, pp. 397-412. Rolf Schönberger: Participation . In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 10, Basel 1998, Sp. 961–969, here: 961.
  12. Jens Halfwassen: Transcendence, transcending. I. Antiquity, Middle Ages. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 10, Basel 1998, Sp. 1442–1447, here: 1444f .; Hans-Gerhard Senger: Transcendence . In: Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. 8, Munich 1997, Sp. 955–957.
  13. Ralf Stolina: Nobody has ever seen God. Berlin 2000, pp. 9-26; Bernhard Brons: God and beings. Göttingen 1976, pp. 214-221.
  14. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I q. 1 a. 5.
  15. Johannes Duns Scotus, Quaestiones super libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis. Libri I – V , ed. Robert Andrews et al. a., St. Bonaventure 1997, p. 9. Cf. Ludger Honnefelder : Scientia transcendens , Hamburg 1990, pp. XIV – XVIII.
  16. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason B XXX, 2nd ed. 1787, AA III, 19 .
  17. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason B XXXIV, AA III, 21 .
  18. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason AA V, 161 .
  19. Markus Enders: Transcendence. II. Modern times. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 10, Basel 1998, pp. 1447–1455.
  20. See also Walter Schulz : Philosophy in the changed world. Pfullingen 1972, especially p. 494 ff. And Wilhelm Weischedel : Der Gott der Philosophen. Munich 1985, vol. 1, p. 308 ff. As well as the examination of Hegel's concept of time from the perspective of an existential philosophy in Martin Heidegger: Being and time. Tübingen 1975, § 82 ff.
  21. Karl Jaspers: From the truth. Munich 1947, p. 109. On the whole, see also Karl Jaspers: The philosophical belief in view of the revelation , 1962; Karl Jaspers: Chiffren der Transzendenz , 1970.
  22. Karl Jaspers: From the truth. Munich 1947, p. 109.
  23. Kurt Salamun: Karl Jaspers , Munich 1985, p. 106.
  24. See Jean-Paul Sartre: The Transcendence of the Ego. Philosophical essays 1931–1939 , Hamburg 1997.
  25. Niklas Luhman: The Religion of Society , Frankfurt 1980, p. 77.
  26. ^ Ernst Tugendhat: Anthropology instead of metaphysics , 2nd edition, Munich 2010.
  27. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Happy Science , § 125.
  28. ^ Ernst Tugendhat: Anthropology instead of metaphysics , 2nd edition, Munich 2010, pp. 21-22.
  29. ^ Ernst Tugendhat: Anthropology instead of metaphysics , 2nd edition, Munich 2010, p. 30.
  30. Hellmuth Hecker: Transcendence . In: Schattenblick. Buddhist monthly sheets , No. 2/2010 (accessed February 8, 2012).
  31. Axel Michaels: The Hinduism: Past and Present. Munich 2006, p. 370.
  32. Kungfutse: Lun Yu 16, 8: Lun Yu. Conversations. Düsseldorf / Cologne 1975, p. 167.
  33. Kungfutse: Lun Yu. Conversations. Düsseldorf / Cologne 1975, p. 109.
  34. Kurt Hübner : Faith and Thinking. Dimensions of reality. 2nd revised edition. Tübingen 2001, pp. 26, 68.
  35. Kurt Hübner: Faith and Thinking. Dimensions of Reality , 2nd reviewed edition, Tübingen 2001, p. 106.
  36. a b Thomas Rentsch : Transcendence and Negativity. Religious-philosophical and aesthetic studies. Berlin / New York 2010, p. 12.
  37. Thomas Rentsch: Transcendence and Negativity. Religious-philosophical and aesthetic studies. Berlin / New York 2010, p. 18.
  38. Thomas Rentsch: Transcendence and Negativity. Religious-philosophical and aesthetic studies. Berlin / New York 2010, p. 150.