But later in the _Critique_ Kant employs the term transcendental in a
second sense, namely, to denote the _a priori_ factors in knowledge. All
representations which are _a priori_ and yet are applicable to objects
are transcendental. The term is then defined through its distinction
from the empirical on the one hand, and from the transcendent on the
other. An intuition or conception is transcendental when it originates
in pure reason, and yet at the same time goes to constitute an _a
priori_ knowledge of objects. The contrast between the transcendental
and the transcendent, as similarly determined upon by Kant, is equally
fundamental, but is of quite different character. That is transcendent
which lies entirely beyond experience; whereas the transcendental
signifies those _a priori_ elements which underlie experience as its
necessary conditions. The transcendent is always unknowable. The
transcendental is that which by conditioning experience renders all
knowledge, whether _a priori_ or empirical, possible. The direct
opposite of the transcendent is the immanent, which as such includes
both the transcendental and the empirical. Thus while Kant employs the
term transcendental in a very special sense which he has himself
arbitrarily determined, he returns to the original etymological meaning
of the term transcendent. It gains a specifically Critical meaning only
through being used to expound the doctrine that all knowledge is limited
to sense-experience. The attempt to find some similar etymological
justification for Kant’s use of the term transcendental has led
Schopenhauer and Kuno Fischer to assert that Kant entitles his
philosophy transcendental because it transcends both the dogmatism and
the scepticism of all previous systems![327] Another attempt has been
made by Stirling[328] and Watson,[329] who assert, at least by
implication, that the transcendental is a species of the transcendent,
in that while the latter transcends the scope of experience, the former
transcends its sense-content. Kant himself, however, nowhere attempts to
justify his use of the term by any such argument.
A third meaning of the term transcendental arises through its extension
from the _a priori_ intuitions and concepts to the processes and
faculties to which they are supposed to be due. Thus Kant speaks of the
transcendental syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition,
and of the transcendental faculties of imagination and understanding. In
this sense the transcendental becomes a title for the conditions which
render experience possible. And inasmuch as processes and faculties can
hardly be entitled _a priori_, Kant has in this third application of the
term departed still further from his first definition of it.[330]