Transcendental, Transcendent, and Philosophical Pursuit: Extending J. N. Mohanty's Analysis

This article explores and extends J. N. Mohanty's defense of transcendental philosophy. I start with a brief presentation of the key features of transcendental philosophy as advocated by Kant. This is followed by an analysis of J. N. Mohanty's articulation and defense of the possibility of Husserlian transcendental philosophy. Mohanty adds a spiritual tinge to transcendental philosophy that takes me to the idea of freedom as transcendence, where the essence of man lies in transcending the natural in him. This is where I bring in the idea of absolute subjectivity that facilitates the emergence of the idea of the transcendent. Transcendent in the sense of transnatural does not fall outside the scope of transcendental philosophy. On the contrary, I argue that transcendental philosophy must account for the idea of the transcendent as a content of transcendental phenomenological experience.