[ad. L. catēgoria, a. Gr. κατηγορία accusation, assertion, predication, abst. sb. from κατήγορ-ος accuser, etc.: see CATEGOREM.]
1. Logic and Metaph. A term (meaning literally ‘predication’ or ‘assertion’) given to certain general classes of terms, things or notions; the use being very different with different authors.
a. Originally used by Aristotle, the nature and meaning of whose ten categories, or predicaments (as, after the Latin translation, they are also called) has been disputed almost from his own day till the present; some holding that they were ‘a classification of all the manners in which assertions may be made of the subject,’ others that they were ‘an enumeration of all things capable of being named, the most extensive classes into which things could be distributed,’ or again, that they were ‘the different kinds of notions corresponding to the definite forms of existence.’ Hence many criticisms of Aristotle’s classification, with modifications of it, or the substitution of new ‘categories,’ proposed by the Stoics, and later philosophers, according as they viewed them logically or metaphysically.
The ten ‘categories’ or ‘predicaments’ of Aristotle were: 1 Substance or being (οὐσία), 2 Quantity, 3 Quality, 4 Relation (πρός τι), 5 Place, 6 Time, 7 Posture (κεῖσθαι), 8 Having or possession (ἔχειν), 9. Action, 10 Passion.
1588. Fraunce, Lawiers Logike, I. ii. 10 b. These generall heades of argumentes … sometimes ., are called Categoremes, and the handling or discoursing of the same Categories.
1677. Gale, Crt. Gentiles, II. IV. Proem 4. Objective Ideas or real Beings, considered in Logic, are reduced by the Aristoteleans … to Ten Categories or Predicaments.
1724. Watts, Logic (1736), 25. The famous ten Ranks of Being, called the ten Predicaments or Categories of Aristotle, on which there are endless Volumes of Discourses formed by several of his Followers.
1849. Abp. Thomson, Laws Th., § 97. Logicians in almost every age have endeavoured to frame schemes of classification in which things should be arranged according to their real nature. To these the name of Categories … has been given.
1858. Mansel, Bampton Lect., iii. (ed. 4), 49. Existence itself, that so-called highest category of thought.
c. 1866. Grote, Aristotle, I. 144. We may illustrate the ten Categories of Aristotle by comparing them with the four Categories of the Stoics. Ibid., 149. Galen also recognizes five Categories; but not the same five as Plotinus.
1882. E. Wallace, trans. Aristotle’s Psychol., 5. The first point … is to determine in which of the higher classes soul is included, and what is its generic character—whether, in other words, it is an individual thing and real substance, or a quality, or a quantity, or any other of the categories, as they have been distinguished.
1883. Liddell & Scott, Grk. Lex., s.v., The categories are a classification of all the manners in which assertions may be made of the subject.
b. Kant applied the term to: The pure a priori conceptions of the understanding, which the mind applies (as forms or frames) to the matter of knowledge received from sense, in order to raise it into an intelligible notion or object of knowledge.
1829. Sir W. Hamilton, Disc. (1853), 26. The Predicaments of Aristotle are … objective, of things as understood; those of Kant subjective, or the mind as understanding…. In reality, the whole Kantian Categories would be generally excluded from those of Aristotle … as determinations of thought, and not genera of real things.
1856. Meiklejohn, trans. Kant’s Crit. Pure Reason, 64. In this manner there arise exactly so many pure conceptions of the understanding, applying a priori to objects of intuition in general, as there are logical functions in all possible judgments…. These conceptions we shall, with Aristotle, call categories, our purpose being originally identical with his, notwithstanding the great difference in the execution. Table of the Categories. 1. Of Quantity: Unity, Plurality, Totality. 2. Of Quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation. 3. Of Relation: Of Inherence and Subsistence (substantia et accidens), of Causality and Dependence (cause and effect), of Community (reciprocity between the agent and patient). 4. Of Modality: Possibility—Impossibility, Existence—Non-existence, Necessity—Contingence.
1877. E. Caird, Philos. Kant, II. viii. 342. Certain general conceptions which are principles of relation for all the manifold of sense … these are the categories.
2. A predicament; a class to which a certain predication or assertion applies.
1678. R. Barclay, Apol. Quakers, V. xxvi. 187. He that cannot hear a thing, as being necessarily absent, and he that cannot hear it, as being naturally deaf, are to be placed in the same Category.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 229. Any offender who was not in any of the categories of proscription.
1856. Miss Mulock, J. Halifax (ed. 17), 382. Lord Ravenel’s case would hardly come under this category.
1880. Nat. Responsib. Opium Trade, 24. To place opium in the same category as alcohol and tobacco.
b. A class, or division, in any general scheme of classification.
1660. Jer. Taylor, Duct. Dubit., I. v. Doubts … must be derived from their several heads and categories.
1818. Hazlitt, Eng. Poets, v. (1870), 129. With him there are but two moral categories, riches and poverty.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Race, Wks. (Bohn), II. 24. We must use the popular category … for convenience, and not as exact and final.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc., II. xiv. (1879), 349. The body … falls into the category of machines.
1883. Ld. Granville, Circular, in Pall Mall Gaz., 9 July, 7/2. The following specimens of bad English … have been taken from despatches recently received at the Foreign Office…. ‘category’ for class.
¶ ‘An accusation.’ Obs.
1613. in R. C., Table Alph., and other 17th c. Dicts.
