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CATEGORY
complete overthrow; for the basis of morality is God
as the ultimate end, highest good, and supreme law-
giver. Kant utterly ignores the nature of both in-
tellect and will. Human reason does not enact the
moral law, but only voices and proclaims it as the en-
actment of a higher power above man, and it is not
from the proclaiming voice that the law derives its
binding force, but from the majesty above that inti-
mates it to us through our conscience.
Nor do the universality and necessity of a law de- termine the will. What really attracts the will, and stirs it as a motive to action, is the goodness of the object presented by the intellect; for the rational ap- petite is by its nature an inclination to good. Hence it is that the desire of perfect happiness necessarily re- sults from rational nature, and that the supreme good, clearly apprehended by the mind, cannot but be de- sired and embraced by the will. Hence, too, a law is not presented as obligatory, unless its observance is known to be necessarily connected with the attain- ment of the supreme good. It is, therefore, wrong to denounce the pursuit of happiness as immoral or repugnant to human nature. On the contrary, a paralysis of all human energy and utter despair would result from bidding man to act only from the motive of stern necessity inherent in law, or forbidding him ever to have his own good in view or to hope for bles- sedness.
The theory of the categorical imperative is, more- over, inconsistent. According to it the human will is the highest lawgiving authority, and yet subject to precepts enjoined on it ; it is absolutely commanding what is objectively right, and at the same time reluc- tant to observe the right order. Again, the categor- ical imperative, as also the autonomy of reason and the freedom of the will, belongs to the intelligible world, and is, therefore, according to the "Critique of Pure Reason", absolutely unknowable and contra- dicted by all laws of experience; nevertheless in Kan- tian ethics it is characterized as commanding with un- mistakable precision and demanding obedience with absolute authority. Such a contradiction between Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" and his "Ethics", between theoretical and practical reason, induces in morals a necessity which resembles fatalism.
Kant sets forth the categorical imperative in his "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Mor- als" (1785) and his "Critique of Practical Reason" (1788).
Porter. Kanl's Ethics (Chicago, 1886); Watson, The Philos- ophy of Kant (New York. 1SS8); Abbot, Tr. of Kanfs Critique of Practical Reason and other M"<;rA-.s- on the Theory of Ethics (London, 1896); Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, His [.if*- and Doc- trine (German ed., Stuttgart, 1S9S); tr. by Ckeighton and Lefeyre (New York, 1902).
John J. Ming.
Category (Greek Karcyopla, accusation, attribu- tion). -The term was transferred by Aristotle from its forensic meaning (procedure in legal accusation) to its logical use as attribution of a subject. The Latin equivalent, prtedicamentum , given it by Boe- thius, aptly suggests its technical significance. The categories or predicaments arc the most widely ge- neric classes or groups of predicates applicable to an individual subject — summa genera preedicatorum. Whether Aristotle originally intended them as aspects and divisions of words, of ideas, or of things is a de- bated question. Nevertheless they lend themselves readily to each of these subjects. They are divisions: (a) of ideas in as much as they are the widest generali- zations under which all other more restricted ideas may be subsumed; (b) of words in that they are the oral terms answering to those supreme notions; (c) of things in the sense that they are aspects which the mind abstracts from the objects falling under experi- ence. In the first acceptation they belong to logic, where they stand as the ultimate classification of 6trictly universal ideas; in the second to grammar, III.— 28
where they represent the parts of speech; in the third
to ontology, where they are the ultimate classes of
real (finite) being. In this latter sense they will be
here considered.
Since it is the business of philosophy to reduce the world of real beings — the self included — to its sim- plest terms or aspects and their orderly relations, t lie task of discovering and defining the corresponding categories has been attempted by every philosopher of note. The results, however, have been by no means identical. Thus we find the Indian sage, Ka- nada, th? reputed founder of the Vaiseshika philoso- phy, reducing all things to substance, quality, action, generality, particularity, co-inherence, and non-exist- ence, while the Greek (supposed) author of the word philosophy, Pythagoras, discovers twenty ultimate groups, ten of which he calls good and the opposite ten bad. Plato in turn subsumes all things under being, identity, diversity, change. In modern times Descartes and Leibniz arranged seven categories: mind (spirit), matter (body), measure, shape, rest . mo- tion, position, while Kant, basing his division on the varieties of judgment , invented twelve categories or forms under which he makes the intellect (Vcrstand) judge of all objects of experience. Aristotle's classi- fication of ten categories which was taken up into Scholasticism, and still holds its place in the logic and ontology of Catholic philosophy, is thus set forth in the fourth chapter of the "Organon": "Of tilings in- complex enunciated (i. e. simple predicates), each signifies either substance or quantity or quality or relation or where (place) or when (time) or position or possession or action or passion. But substance is to speak generally as 'man', 'horse'; quantity as 'two' or 'three cubits'; quality as 'white'; rela- tion as 'greater'; where as 'in the Forum'; when as ' yesterday ' ; position as ' he sits ' ; possession as ' he is shod'; action as 'he cuts'; passion as ' he burns'".
Of these groups substance, quantity, quality, and relation are obviously the principal; the remaining six are reducible to some form of relation, for it should he noted tliat between some of the categories a real dis- tinction is not required; a virtual, i. e. an objectively founded mental distinction suffices, as, e. g., between action and passion. The object or thing divided into the categories is: (a) real being i. e. not the mere being expressed by the copulative verb (eras copulas); nor conceptual being {entia rationis); nor, at least ac- cording to many A list ot cleans, being as explicitly actual (ens participium); but substantive or essential being — reality — the object matter of ontology (ens essentia, non ens existential) ; (b) being per se, i. e. being having an essential not merely accidental unity — suchasan artificial or a random construction — (ens per se, non per accidens), or concrete adjectives which in- clude a subject; (c) complete being, not the abstract differential or the parts of things; (d) finite being; the Infinite of course transcends all categories. Though the privilege of categorization is thus limited, a meth- od has been devised whereby accommodation may be secured for any (finite) reality whatsoever. For (a) some beings enter a category directly (in linca recta), as do genera, species, and individuals; (b) others indirectly (a latere), as do specific and individual differ- entice; or (c) others come in by reduction as do the parts of things and things having only an accidental unity (entia per accidens), and even, by analogy, men- tal fictions (entia rationis). Thus for instance family and hand are reduced to the category of substance; in- tensity of heat to quality; a point to quantity and so on. It should be noted, however, that being itself as such (ens transcendentate) cannot be confined to a category since it is not a univocal, but only an analo- gous attribute of the supreme divisions of reality (e. g. substance and accident), and is not therefore a genus as is each category. For the same reason accident is not a genus by itself under which the nine classes
