Trichotomy (philosophy)

History

Important trichotomies discussed by Aquinas include the causal principles (agent, patient, act), the potencies for the intellect (imagination, cogitative power, and memory and reminiscence), and the acts of the intellect (concept, judgment, reasoning), with all of those rooted in Aristotle; also the transcendentals of being (unity, truth, goodness) and the requisites of the beautiful (wholeness, harmony, radiance).

Kant expounded a table of judgments involving four three-way alternatives, in regard to (1) Quantity, (2) Quality, (3) Relation, (4) Modality, and, based thereupon, a table of four categories, named by the terms just listed, and each with three subcategories. Kant also adapted the Thomistic acts of intellect in his trichotomy of higher cognition—(a) understanding, (b) judgment, (c) reason—which he correlated with his adaptation in the soul's capacities—(a) cognitive faculties, (b) feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and (c) faculty of desire—of Tetens's trichotomy of feeling, understanding, and will. In his Logic (113) Kant notes that all "polytomy are empirical" and "cannot be taught in logic".

Hegel held that a thing's or idea's internal contradiction leads in a dialectical process to a new synthesis that makes better sense of the contradiction. The process is sometimes described as thesis, antithesis, synthesis. It is instanced across a pattern of trichotomies (e.g. being-nothingness-becoming, immediate-mediate-concrete, abstract-negative-concrete); such trichotomies are not just three-way classificatory divisions; they involve trios of elements functionally interrelated in a process. They are often called triads (but 'triad' does not have that as a fixed sense in philosophy generally).

Charles Sanders Peirce built his philosophy on trichotomies and triadic relations and processes, and framed the "Reduction Thesis" that every predicate is essentially either monadic (quality), dyadic (relation of reaction or resistance), or triadic (representational relation), and never genuinely and irreducibly tetradic or larger.

Examples

Notes

§The list of trichotomies featuring different philosophers was initially influenced by Herb O. Buckland's List which was placed on the Wikipedia years ago but subsequently removed because a complaint was raised about credit not being given to the original author. The original list is here: https://www.threesology.org/3s-poster-5.php. Credit needs to be given where it is due.

References

1. Kant, Immanuel, ''The Critique of Judgment'', 2007 edition, Cosimo Classics, pp. 10-11.
2. Teo, Thomas (2005), ''The critique of psychology: from Kant to postcolonial theory'', p. 43.
3. Kant I., (1800), [https://books.google.com/books?id=PCxAAAAAIAAJ&q=trichotomy ''Logic''] (Logik), tr. J. Richardson London, 1819, p.209. In preparation he states "A division into two members goes under the appelation of dichotomy; but it, when consisting of more than two, takes the name of poytomy".
4. Plato, ''[[Timaeus (dialogue). Timaeus]]'', 30.
5. Calian, Florian. (2012). "Plato's Psychology of Action and the Origin of Agency". L'Harmattan.
6. Petersen, W.L. 2011. ''Patristic and Text-Critical Studies: The Collected Essays of William L. Petersen''. Brill: Leiden. p. 229. [https://books.google.com/books?id=ObwyAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA229 link].
7. Davies, W.D., Allison, D.C. ''A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew''. T&T Clark, 1988-1997, 3 vols. [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZXIV2WOTVvMC&pg=PA241 link]. [vol 3, p. 241.]
8. Crandall University. ''Pauline anthropology''. [http://www.mycrandall.ca/courses/pauline/human.htm].
9. ''Augustine through the Ages'' (1999), p. 582.
10. Saint Augustine of Hippo, ''[[De Trinitate]]'', 10, 11; ''Encyclopedia of Christian Theology'', Volume 1 (2004), page 54. See Saint Augustine of Hippo, ''De Trinitate'', 14. Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP explains that Saint Augustine does not identify these 3 features as "powers" of the soul. [http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1079.htm Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP, ''Summa Theologiae'', Prima Pars, Q. 79, A. 7, ad 1].
11. Saint John of the Cross, OCD, Doctor, ''The Ascent of Mount Carmel'', Book 2, Chapter 6, §1.
12. "St. Albertus Magnus" in the ''Catholic Encyclopedia''. [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01264a.htm Eprint].
13. See ''The Pocket Aquinas'' (1991).
14. "Francis Bacon, Viscount Saint Alban", Britannica.com [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/48126/Francis-Bacon-Viscount-Saint-Alban-Baron-of-Verulam/10340/Thought-and-writings Eprint]
15. Redding, Paul (1997, 2006), "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel" in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/ Eprint].
16. McDonald, William (1996, 2009), "Søren Kierkegaard" in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. See [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/#Aesth Section 6].
17. Klement, Kevin C. (2005), "[http://www.iep.utm.edu/frege/ Gottlob Frege (1848—1925)]", ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.
18. Joyce, James (1914-1915), ''[[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]'', see [http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/paym/files/paym5.html Chapter 5], especially (but not only) lines 8215-8221.
19. Popper, Karl (1982), ''The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism''.
20. Zukofsky, Louis, ''"A"'' – 12 (1966), and ''Prepositions'' (1967, 1981), p. 55.
21. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1942), ''La structure du comportement'', and published in English as ''The Structure of Behavior''.