Methodological arsenal of Aristotle and Kant. Categories

Abstract

The classical toolkit of philosophy includes, as a necessary basic “set”, certain general concepts, extremely abstract and deeply essential, which are called in Greek categories, and in Latin predicabiles, but more often — universals. Initially, Aristotle introduces the first ten such categories into his texts that further became canonic, in a small but very complex work of the same name. Up to the era of Modernity, his methodological arsenal served European philosophy with unfailing success. However, in the XVIII century, Immanuel Kant, sharply and definitely distinguishing rationality and reason unlike Aristotle, introduces the categories of logic not as abstractions, but as propositions systematically developed from a general principle: the ability, or faculty, of judgment. These approaches are very different: for example, in relation to concepts, — and Aristotle’s categories are precisely concepts, — the question of truth does not arise at all: it concerns only judgments. On the other hand, these approaches have something in common. Both philosophical systems in the field of gnoseology are formal-logical. Kant’s approach, dialectical in the study and explanation of the objective world, in terms of the theory of knowledge was not yet dialectical; or, it is believed rather, that this was negative-dialectical. In fact, this approach is intermediate, syntagmatic.