Abstract

We do not normally speak of “social categories” except when we use “category” in a loose sense applicable to any concept serving a classificatory purpose. Let us for the moment ignore the problem why we might want to use social categories and concentrate on the problems social categories may involve. In a very strict sense, that of Aristotle, categories have their place in general metaphysics or ontology; they express highest determinations of being in terms of “modes”. It is clear that such a strict notion of category is insufficient for an ontological account of beings. This has been acutely felt in the case of the thinking and acting subject which, on these terms, cannot be significantly set off from things. Accordingly, with the advent of epistemology, or transcendental philosophy, respectively, the subject as the agent of knowledge and praxis came to be interpreted in new ways: as a self, as a monad, or as a synthetic unity analogous to the unity which a concept establishes among objects inter se, among subjects or cognitions inter se, and between subject and object. This new departure leads, as we can see, to a division of categories in terms of for-itself and in-itself, the in-itself serving, for the time being, as the locus of the classical categories. This new division is of a fundamental nature, introducing, as it were, supercategories overriding the traditional breakdown into categories.