Category (Philosophy)

In ancient Greek, κατηγορία is literally “accusation”, from κατα- - prefix denoting opposition, and ἀγορεύω - “I am giving a speech (at a meeting)”, from ἀγορά - “popular assembly”. The original meaning of the “accusation” is weakened by Aristotle to “approval”, “statement”. It is in this second sense that Aristotle applied the word κατηγορία to the 10 most common characteristics (attributes) of things.

Latins (for example, Augustine and Boethius ) translated the Aristotelian word κατηγορία by the neologism praedicamentum (from praedico - to declare publicly; less often - to name, to name). In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, along with praedicamentum, direct transliteration from Greek - categoria was used .

In English, the expression " categorical imperative " from the philosophy of I. Kant was first used in 1827 ^[2] .

The concept of category (logical category) developed in the process of the formation of philosophy as a science .

Aristotle's categories

It was introduced by Aristotle . Aristotle refers to categories as the most general concepts that serve as predicates , deduces them from grammatical forms, and counts them 10: “essence” (or “ substance ”) ( dr. Greek οὐσία ), “ quantity ” ( dr. Greek ποσόν ) , “ Quality ” ( other Greek ποιότης ), “ relation ” ( τὸ πρός τί ), “space” ( τὸ που ), “time” ( τὸ πότε ), “state” ( τὸ κεῖσθαι ), “action” ( τὸ ποιεῖν ), “possession” ( τὸ ἔχειν ) and “suffering” ( τὸ πάσχειν ).

In the famous meaning you can look at the Pythagorean table of 10 opposites as an attempt to list categories (finite and infinite, paired and unpaired, unity and multitude, light and shadow, good and evil, square and other figures). The Aristotelian table of categories represents two kinds of imperfections: random derivation (from parts of speech) and reducibility of some categories to others. Instead of ten Aristotle categories, the Stoics accepted only four: substance, quality, modality and attitude; only quantity categories are missing here . Plotinus in the first three books of the sixth Ennead criticizes Aristotelian table in detail and offers his own, which, however, does not play any role in history .

Categories in the Middle Ages

Porfiry wrote an Introduction to Aristotle's Categories.

Also, comments on both the “Categories” of Aristotle and the “Introduction” of Porfiry were written by Boethius .

In connection with the first category (more precisely, the existence of the second entity - the existence of species and genera) in the X century. the debate about universals begins.

Raimund Lullsky (1234–1315) tried to list the principles or the most general concepts and the most general relations of thinking to objects. He arranged these principles in the form of tablets, and all sorts of new points of view should have been obtained from various combinations of principles. Thus, its categories were to serve as a kind of logic of discovery.

Kant's categories

According to Kant , the world of sensations is complete chaos, a heap of chaotic feelings and events. It is necessary to restore order in this chaos. This world is transformed using a priori forms of sensuality, such as time and space. Time and space do not exist in the real world, but are forms of our perception that organize the initial chaos that comes into perception. They exist without experience and outside of experience in the sense that are inherent in our sensory perception as such, the presence of perception in itself assumes the existence in it of mechanisms for organizing sensations in spatial and temporal dimensions. The imposition of connections in the world of phenomena is found through categories of reason. With the help of these connections, the knower turns chaos into order and a regular moving world. Kant distinguishes the following categories of reason:

1. Quantity Categories
   1. Unity
   2. Lots of
   3. Wholeness
2. Quality categories
   1. Reality
   2. Negation
   3. Limitation
3. Relations
   1. Inherent and independent existence (substantia et accidens)
   2. Causality and dependence (cause and effect)
   3. Communication (interaction between the current and the exposed)
4. Modality Categories
   1. Opportunity and Impossibility
   2. Existence and nonexistence
   3. Necessity and chance

Kant's doctrine represents the same flaw as Aristotelian. Kant does not derive categories — forms of reason — from the activity of reason, but takes them from ready-made judgments; the random nature of the categories and the lack of derivation are the reproaches Kant Fichte makes. It is necessary to derive all categories from their highest foundation - from the unity of consciousness. This task is more complete than Fichte, Hegel solved in his logic.

Hegel's categories

By K. Hegel means the same as Kant, only more decisively gives them a metaphysical character. A means of deriving categories is the dialectical method. The beginning of the process of forming categories is the most abstract, poor in content concept of being, from which first the categories of quality, then quantity, etc. are obtained.

Everything categories:

1. Quality
2. amount
3. Measure
4. Existing
5. Phenomenon
6. Actuality
7. Subject
8. An object
9. Idea

Current status

The following are the various definitions of this term that currently exist.

• Category - any concept that is “extremely general” or close to it; concept with great power (volume).
• In dialectical logic , a category (logical category) is understood as a concept that reflects the sequential stage of the formation of any particular whole (respectively, the process of its spiritual and theoretical reproduction).
• In metaphysics, various modes of being are called categories of being or simply categories.
• One of the most abstract areas of modern mathematics - category theory - uses the term "category" as the base. It is alleged that this term was used by its authors in connection with the terminology of Immanuel Kant ( ^[3] )

In relation to the categories in modern science and in philosophy, several approaches have been formed. Categories are the most general concepts, as a rule, which cannot be defined in the framework of one theory, and often in the whole scientific direction, discipline.

Categories serve as constituent elements for categorical schemes (CS) that determine the thinking process, and each of the categories, due to the possibility of decryption, is itself a carrier of the procedural moment, while CS is a work program.

Categories are used in the problems of systematizing knowledge and the cognitive process, where they play the role of notation for rubrics. Along with these definitions, categories are perceived as metalanguage formations, which include definitions of concept classes.

Categories are special cognitive units that provide knowledge transfer processes in multidisciplinary research (MI).

Categories capture classes of knowledge, stages and factors of the cognitive process, so they are included in the knowledge management system.

Categories allow you to connect any knowledge with philosophy and, conversely, make the transition from it to any specific field of knowledge.

However, despite the considerable interest in the categories, their application in modern natural science is carried out mainly at the level of intuition. ^[five]

• Aristotle. "Categories" on the portal "Philosophy in Russia"
• Radlov E.L. Category // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• An article in the Stanford Philosophical Encyclopedia .