CATEGORY ( Fr. categoric, Lat. categoria, from Gk. sartryonia, katCgoria, category, charge, from KaTIly0pEe•IV, /CU( to accuse, from Kani, kaki, down + ayoptivv, agoreuein, to de claim, from (iyopa, agora, assembly, from ilyttr, age in, to lead). A philosophical term in use since the time of Aristotle. Aristotle used it to denote the highest classes under which all predi cates of propositions concerning things can be sub sumed. Ile recognized ten such categories, viz. substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, possession, action, and passivity. The Hindu philosopher Kav5da is said to have treated categories in such a way as to have attained a result very much like Aristotle's. (See Thompson's Laws of Thought, appendix by Max Muller.) The Stoics recognized four on tological categories—substance, attribute, states, and relations. Plotinus recognized five—being, rest, motion, identity, and difference. The Scholastics accepted Aristotle's classification without any other change than to Latinize the word category into predica men( um, whence collies our word predicament in the sense of `plight.' Fo be in a bad predicament is to be so circumstanced that the predicate of a judgment that adequately expresses one's situation falls under a bad class of predicates. Kant (q.v.) objected to Aristotle's classification as being un critical, and proposed a new classification rest ing on the traditional classification of judgments. But Kant did more than give a new classification of categories. He introduced a new conception of their nature. They were for him a priori (q.v.) principles of synthesis, whereby thought brings into definite intelligible form the chaotic manifold elements of sense. Kant recognized four categories, those of quantity, quality, rela tion, and modality. Each of these was subdi vided into three classes, with twelve resulting categories, viz. unity, plurality, totality; reality, negation. limitation: inherence and subsistence, causality and dependence, community; possibil ity and impossibility, existence and non-exist ence, necessity and contingency. (See KANT. ) Hegel criticised Kant for doing what Kant criti cised Aristotle for doing, and insisted that dia lectic is the only method whereby the categories can be satisfactorily determined. (See DIALEC
TIC.) He also modified the Kantian view of categories by making them not so much forms imposed by thought on sense-contents, themselves devoid of such forms, as principles obtaining in the unitary world of thought and things. They have thus both an objective and a subjec tive significancy. Hegel in this way embodied in his treatment of categories both the Aris totelian realism and the Kantian idealism. _\s a result of his dialectic method, Hegel obtained three groups of categories—being. essence., and con crete thought (Beg•iff). Each of these has many subdivisions, so that the list he gives includes something like one hundred and fifty; but he does not claim absolute accuracy or exhaustive ness for the detailed results he obtains. .1". S. proposed as substitute for Aristotle's clas sification: ( 1) feelings, or states of conscious (2) the minds which experience those feelings; (3) bodies or external objects which excite certain of those feelings; (4) the sucees sions and co-existences, the likenesses and un likenesses, between feelings or states of con sciousness. For Mill, categories were namable things. In recent times Ed. von Hart mann has written a detailed work on categories (kategorienlehre. 1ti9(;). lie defines a category as an unconscious a priori intellectual function of a definite sort. This is very much like Nant's view; but categories are not so much part of the innate constitution of each individual as they are the ways in which the impersonal reason acts in individuals. Thus in origin they are siti(cr personal. but as concrete functions they belong to the individualized group of functions. There are three great divisions—categories of sensation, of perception, and of thought. Each division is more or less subdivided. It will thus be seen that one's views of categ()ries are determined by one's epistemological views. In accordance with the epistemological view developed in this work (see KNOWLEDGE. TIIEORY OF) a category may be defined as an intelligible relation between ob jects. Consult: Caird. Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (New York, 1889) ; and Harris, liegePs Logic (Chicago, 1890).