What do we mean when we talk about transcendence? Plato and Virginia Woolf

Plato lends expression to an Axial Age understanding of transcendence: a philosopher, if virtuous, can be released from bodily and temporal existence. Virginia Woolf lends expression to a Romantic or Modernist understanding of transcendence: an artist, if gifted, can be released from the cramped condition of ordinary existence. In this essay, borrowing a concept from Charles Taylor, I argue that Plato and Woolf show us what an immanent transcendence involves: the reach of a soul transformed by an ideal or a vision it lives by. In Plato, in Woolf, what is at stake is poise, openness of mind, largeness of perspective.