List of Categories - Second Essay
1.293,300-303,326-329 G-c.1894-1
293. A thorough study of the logic of relatives confirms the
conclusions which I had reached before going far in that study.
It shows that logical terms are either monads, dyads, or
polyads, and that these last do not introduce any radically
different elements from those that are found in triads. I
therefore divide all objects into monads, dyads, and triads; and the
first step in the present inquiry is to ascertain what are the
conceptions of the pure monad, free from all dyadic and
triadic admixtures; of the dyad (which involves that of the
monad) free from all triadic contamination, and what it is that
is peculiar which the dyad adds to the monad; and of the triad
(which involves those of the monad and dyad) and what it is
that is characteristic of the triad.
* From "The List of Categories: A Second Essay," c. 1894. 300 and 301
precede 293 in the ms.
300. The list of categories, or as Harris, ** the author of
Hermes, called them, the "philosophical arrangements," is a
table of conceptions drawn from the logical analysis of thought
and regarded as applicable to being. This description applies
not merely to the list published by me in 1867, *** and which I
here endeavor to amplify, but also to the categories of
Aristotle and to those of Kant. The latter have been more or less
modified by different critics, as Renouvier, and still more
profoundly by Hegel. My own list grew originally out of the study
of the table of Kant.
301. I shall not here inquire how far it is justifiable to
apply the conceptions of logic to metaphysics. For I hold the
importance of that question, great as it is, to be perhaps
secondary, and at any rate not paramount to that of the question
what such conceptions would be. I may say, however, that in
my own opinion, each category has to justify itself by an
inductive examination which will result in assigning to it only
a limited or approximate validity.
# 2. THE MANIFESTATION OF FIRSTNESS ****
302. The idea of First is predominant in the ideas of
freshness, life, freedom. The free is that which has not another
behind it, determining its actions; but so far as the idea of the
negation of another enters, the idea of another enters; and
* From "The List of Categories: A Second Essay," c. 1894. 293 follows 301
in the ms.
** James Harris, in his Philosophical Arrangements (1775).
*** See ch. 6.
**** From "The List of Categories: A Second Essay, X," c. 1894.
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such negative idea must be put in the background, or else we
cannot say that the Firstness is predominant. Freedom can
only manifest itself in unlimited and uncontrolled variety and
multiplicity; and thus the first becomes predominant in the
ideas of measureless variety and multiplicity. It is the leading
idea of Kant's "manifold of sense." But in Kant's synthetic
unity the idea of Thirdness is predominant. It is an attained
unity; and would better have been called totality; for that is
the one of his categories in which it finds a home. In the idea
of being, Firstness is predominant, not necessarily on account
of the abstractness of that idea, but on account of its
self-containedness. It is not in being separated from qualities that
Firstness is most predominant, but in being something peculiar
and idiosyncratic. The first is predominant in feeling, as
distinct from objective perception, will, and thought.
# 3. THE MONAD*
303. The pure idea of a monad is not that of an object. For
an object is over against me. But it is much nearer an object
than it is to a conception of self, which is still more complex.
There must be some determination, or suchness, otherwise we
shall think nothing at all. But it must not be an abstract
suchness, for that has reference to a special suchness. It must be a
special suchness with some degree of determination, not,
however, thought as more or less. There is to be no comparison.
So that it is a suchness sui generis. Imagine me to make and in
a slumberous condition to have a vague, unobjectified, still less
unsubjectified, sense of redness, or of salt taste, or of an ache,
or of grief or joy, or of a prolonged musical note. That would
be, as nearly as possible, a purely monadic state of feeling.
Now in order to convert that psychological or logical
conception into a metaphysical one, we must think of a metaphysical
monad as a pure nature, or quality, in itself without parts or
features, and without embodiment. Such is a pure monad.
The meanings of names of "secondary" qualities are as good
approximations to examples of monads as can be given.
* From "The List of Categories: A Second Essay," c. 1894. 303 follows 293
and is followed by 326 in the ms.
326. A dyad consists of two subjects brought into oneness.
These subjects have their modes of being in themselves, and
they also have their modes of being, as first and second, etc.,
in connection with each other. They are two, if not really, at
least in aspect. There is also some sort of union of them. The
dyad is not the subjects; it has the subjects as one element of
it. It has, besides, a suchness of monoidal character; and it has
suchness, or suchnesses, peculiar to it as a dyad. The dyad
brings the subjects together, and in doing so imparts a character
* From "The List of Categories: A Second Essay," continuing 303.
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to each of them. Those characters are, in some sense,
two. The dyad has also two sides according to which subject
is considered as first. These two sides of the dyad form a
second pair of subjects attached to the dyad; and they have
their mode of union. Each of them also has a special character
as a subject of the dyad.
This description shows that the dyad, in contrast to the
monad, has a variety of features; and all these features present
dyadic relations.
327. As an example of a dyad take this: God said, Let there
be light, and there was light. We must not think of this as a
verse of Genesis, for Genesis would be a third thing. Neither
must we think of it as proposed for our acceptance, or as held
for true; for we are third parties. We must simply think of God
creating light by fiat. Not that the fiat and the coming into
being of the light were two facts; but that it is in one indivisible
fact. God and light are the subjects. The act of creation is to
be regarded, not as any third object, but merely as the
suchness of connection of God and light. The dyad is the fact. It
determines the existence of the light, and the creatorship of
God. The two aspects of the dyad are, first, that of God
compelling the existence of the light, and that of the light as, by its
coming into existence, making God a creator. This last is in
the present example merely a mere point of view, without any
reality corresponding to it. That is one of the special features
of the particular example chosen. Of the two aspects of the
dyad, then, one is in this instance, fundamental, real, and
primary, while the other is merely derivative, formal, and
secondary.
328. I chose this instance because it is represented as
instantaneous. Had there been any process intervening between
the causal act and the effect, this would have been a medial, or
third, element. Thirdness, in the sense of the category, is the
same as mediation. For that reason, pure dyadism is an act of
arbitrary will or of blind force; for if there is any reason, or
law, governing it, that mediates between the two subjects and
brings about their connection. The dyad is an individual fact,
as it existentially is; and it has no generality in it. The being
of a monadic quality is a mere potentiality, without existence.
Existence is purely dyadic.
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329. It is to be noted that existence is an affair of blind
force. "The very hyssop that grows on the wall exists in that
chink because the whole universe could not prevent it." No
law determines any atom to exist. Existence is presence in
some experiential universe -- whether the universe of material
things now existing, or that of laws, or that of phenomena, or
that of feelings -- and this presence implies that each existing
thing is in dynamical reaction with every other in that
universe. Existence, therefore, is dyadic; though Being is monadic.