Trichotomy (philosophy)

For other uses, see trichotomy (mathematics).

A trichotomy is a three-way classificatory division. Some philosophers pursued trichotomies.

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^[1]—of Tetens's trichotomy of feeling, understanding, and will.^[2] In his Logic (113) Kant notes that all "polytomy are empirical" and "cannot be taught in logic".^[3]

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 of philosophical trichotomies

Plato's 3 parts of man[4][5]	Nous (mind, intellect). Psyche (soul). Soma (body).
Plato's 3 transcendentals	Truth (logic, verum). Goodness (ethics, bonum). Beauty (aesthetics, pulchrum).
Plato's tripartite soul	Logistikon (logical, rational). Thymoeides (spirited, various animal qualities). Epithymetikon (appetitive, volitive, libidinous, desiring).
Aristotle's 3 kinds of soul	Threptike (nutritive, vegetative). Aisthetike (sensitive, animal). Noetike (rational, human).
Aristotle's 3 main modes of persuasion	Ethos. Pathos. Logos.
Plotinus' three principles	The One. Nous (mind, intellect). Psyche (soul).
Shema's 3 elements of man	1] לב (lev) /Kardia (heart). 2] נפׁש (nephesh) /Psyche (soul). 3] מְאֹד (me'od) /Dynamis (power)[6][7]
Saint Paul's tripartite nature of humanity (I Thes. 5:23)	Pneuma (spirit). Psyche (soul). Soma (body). (Paul uses alternative concepts in other passages: kardia [heart], eso kai exo anthropos [inner and outer human being]; nous [mind]; suneidesis [conscience]; sarx [flesh]).[8]
Saint Augustine's 3 Laws[9]	Divine Law. Natural Law. Temporal, Positive, or Human Law.
Saint Augustine's 3 features of the soul[10]	Intellect. Will. Memory. (Saint John of the Cross, OCD follows this also, but may erroneously identify them as 3 distinct powers.[11])
Saint Albertus Magnus' 3 Universals[12]	Ante rem (Idea in God's mind). In re (potential or actual in things). Post rem (mentally abstracted).
Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P.'s 3 causal principles[13] (based in Aristotle)	Agent. Patient. Act.
Aquinas' 3 potencies for intellect[13] (based in Aristotle)	Imagination. Cogitative power (or, in animals, instinct). Memory (and, in humans, reminiscence).
Aquinas' 3 acts of intellect[13] (based in Aristotle)	Conception. Judgment. Reasoning.
Aquinas' 3 transcendentals of being[13]	Unity. Truth. Goodness.
Aquinas' 3 requisites for the beautiful[13]	Wholeness or perfection. Harmony or due proportion. Radiance.
Sir Francis Bacon's 3 Tables[14]	Presence. Absence. Degree.
Bacon's 3 faculties of mind	Memory. Reason. Imagination.
Bacon's 3 branches of knowledge	History. Philosophy. Poetry. (Inspired the figurative system of human knowledge of Diderot and d'Alembert.)
Thomas Hobbes' 3 Fields	Physics. Moral Philosophy. Civil Philosophy.
John Dryden's 3 ways of transferring	Metaphrase. Paraphrase. Imitation.
Christian Wolff's 3 special metaphysics	Rational psychology. Rational cosmology. Rational theology.
Kant's 3 faculties of soul[1]	Faculties of knowledge. Feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Faculty of desire (which Kant regarded also as the will).
Kant's 3 higher faculties of cognition[1]	Understanding. Judgment. Reason.
Kant's 3 judgments of quantity	Universal. Particular. Singular
Kant's 3 categories of quantity	Unity. Plurality. Totality
Kant's 3 judgments of quality	Affirmative. Negative. Infinite
Kant's 3 categories of quality	Reality. Negation. Limitation.
Kant's 3 judgments of relation	Categorical. Hypothetical. Disjunctive.
Kant's 3 categories of relation	Inherence and subsistence. Causality and dependence. Community.   In other words: Substance and accident. Cause and effect. Reciprocity.
Kant's 3 judgments of modality	Problematical. Assertoric. Apodictic
Kant's 3 categories of modality	Possibility. Existence. Necessity
Johannes Nikolaus Tetens's 3 powers of mind[2]	Feeling. Understanding. Will.
Hannah Arendt's vita activa	Labor, Work, Action
Hegel's 3 Spirits[15]	Subjective Spirit. Objective Spirit. Absolute Spirit.
Søren Kierkegaard's 3 stages[16]	Aesthetic. Ethical. Religious.
Charles Sanders Peirce's 3 categories	Quality of feeling. Reaction, resistance. Representation, mediation.
C. S. Peirce's 3 universes of experience	Ideas. Brute fact. Habit (habit-taking).
C. S. Peirce's 3 orders of philosophy	Phenomenology. Normative sciences. Metaphysics.
C. S. Peirce's 3 normatives	The good (esthetic). The right (ethical). The true (logical).
C. S. Peirce's 3 semiotic elements	Sign (representamen). Object. Interpretant.
C. S. Peirce's 3 grades of conceptual clearness	By familiarity. Of definition's parts. Of conceivable practical implications.
C. S. Peirce's 3 active principles in the cosmos	Spontaneity, absolute chance. Mechanical necessity. Creative love.
Gottlob Frege's 3 realms of sense[17]	The external, public, physical. The internal, private, mental. The Platonic, ideal but objective (to which sentences refer).
Sigmund Freud's structural model[5]	Id, ego, and superego (das „Es“, das „Ich“, das „Über-Ich“)
Edmund Husserl's 3 Reductions	Phenomenological. Eidetic. Religious.
R. Steiner more threefold aspects.	Body, soul and spirit. Imagination, inspiration and intuition.
Korzybski's 3 types of life	Chemical-binder (i.e. plants). Space-binder (i.e. mammals). Time-binder (i.e. humans). Each one up the scale requires the previous one.
James Joyce's 3 aesthetic stages[18]	Arrest (by wholeness). Fascination (by harmony). Enchantment (by radiance).
Jacques Lacan's 3 orders	Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary
Karl Popper's 3 worlds[19]	Physical things and processes. Subjective human experience. Culture and objective knowledge
Louis Zukofsky's 3 aesthetic elements[20]	Shape. Rhythm. Style.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 3 fields[21]	Physical. Vital. Human.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 3 categories[21]	Quantity. Order. Meaning.
Eric Berne's transactional analysis	Parent, Adult, Child
Alan Watts' 3 world views	Life as machine (Western). Life as organism (Chinese). Life as drama (Indian).

See also

• Balanced ternary
• Dichotomy
• Epistemological pluralism
• Rule of three (writing)
• Trilemma
• Trinity
• Tripartite motto

Notes

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), 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, 30.
5. Calian, Florian (2012). Plato's Psychology of Action and the Origin of Agency. L'Harmattan. pp. 9–12. ISBN 978-963-236-587-9.
6. Petersen, W.L. 2011. Patristic and Text-Critical Studies: The Collected Essays of William L. Petersen. Brill: Leiden. p. 229. 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. link. [vol 3, p. 241.]
8. Crandall University. Pauline anthropology. .
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. 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. Eprint.
13. See The Pocket Aquinas (1991).
14. "Francis Bacon, Viscount Saint Alban", Britannica.com Eprint
15. Redding, Paul (1997, 2006), "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Eprint.
16. McDonald, William (1996, 2009), "Søren Kierkegaard" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. See Section 6.
17. Klement, Kevin C. (2005), "Gottlob Frege (1848—1925)", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
18. Joyce, James (1914-1915), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, see 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.