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Of course, in the background of all this is Aristotle, who defines metaphysics, or "first philosophy," as the study of being qua being, which is to say, the study of being as such together with its essential attributes. To say that something is is also to say that it is one, so that unity is an essential attribute of being and convertible with it. Just as being is found in all the categories, so also is unity. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle remarks that goodness, also, is applicable in all the categories. Therefore, in the terms of the later scholastic philosophers, unity and goodness are transcendental attributes of being, since, in being applicable in all categories, they are confined to none and do not constitute genera. 

Wiki MarkupOf especial interest so far as my own metaphysical reflections are concerned is the doctrine of _transcendentia_ developed by Duns Scotus. For him, the _passiones entis (=_ attributes of being) include both _passiones e. convertibiles_, such as one, true, and good, and passiones e. disjunctæ, such as necessary / contingent (_sc_. possible) and act/potency, both of which are "transcendent" attributes. Moreover, the concept "being," and thus the concepts of its attributes, are univocal, in the sense that they belong to being either "as indifferent to finite and \ [infinite\]," in the case of the convertible attributes," or as including both finite and infinite, act and potency, and so on, in the case of the disjunctive attributes.  

September 1981; rev. 22 July 2002