Transgressive Transcendentalism

Transgressive Transcendentalism is "transcendental" in a Kantian sense: an ideal standpoint is adopted as a benchmark against which to criticize the inherited order.

That ideal standpoint consists of what William O. Douglas termed "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice" [Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457 (1940) following, loosely, dicta in the opinion of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in McDonald v. Mabee, 243 U.S. 90 (1917)]. Where exactly those traditional notions come from or in what they consist is never addressed by the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who refer to them, but one may surmise without much speculation that their sources are several.

For the Transgressive Transcendentalist, Near Eastern prophecy from Zarathustra to Muhammad contributes to the construction of this canon of critical standards.

The "transgressive" aspect of this Transcendental mode is Melvillean as Melville was, in the words of Arthur Versluis, an "inverted transcendentalist" and a latter-day "Gnostic," which is to say, an individual profoundly troubled by the fact of human suffering. (See Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions, OUP, 1993).



That transgressive turn undercuts the tendency towards Emersonian optimism that may otherwise lurk in the transcendental impulse. The thing-in-itself remains not only epistemologically unavailable but also morally inscrutable.

Even so, as Melville himself understood, there are everyday mercies that enable every one of us to bear the strain of life in this tavern of ruin.