In Kant's philosophy, a category is a pure concept of the understanding. A Kantian category is a characteristic of the appearance of any object in general, before it has been experienced. Kant wrote that "They are concepts of an object in general…." Kant also wrote that "…pure concepts [Categories] of the understanding…apply to objects of intuition in general…." Such a category is not a classificatory division, as the word is commonly used. It is...
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In Kant's philosophy, a category is a pure concept of the understanding. A Kantian category is a characteristic of the appearance of any object in general, before it has been experienced. Kant wrote that "They are concepts of an object in general…." Kant also wrote that "…pure concepts [Categories] of the understanding…apply to objects of intuition in general…." Such a category is not a classificatory division, as the word is commonly used. It is, instead, the condition of the possibility of objects in general, that is, objects as such, any and all objects, not specific objects in particular.
The word comes from the Greek κατηγορία, katēgoria, meaning "that which can be said, predicated, or publicly declared and asserted, about something." A category is an attribute, property, quality, or characteristic that can be predicated of a thing. "…I remark concerning the categories…that their logical employment consists in their use as predicates of objects." Kant called them "ontological...
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