Literary notes about Categorical (AI summary)
The term "categorical" has been employed in literature to denote ideas that are definitive and unqualified, frequently serving as a marker for universal principles or strict classifications. For instance, in philosophical works such as Kant’s, "categorical imperative" is used to express an unconditional moral law that one must follow ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]). In contrast, authors also apply the term in broader contexts, where it underscores strict or clear-cut choices, as seen when choices are described as "categorical" in matters of personal preference or decisiveness ([6], [7]). Additionally, thinkers like Nietzsche have famously critiqued and reinterpreted the concept, questioning its necessity and practical impact ([8], [9], [10], [11], [12]), while other works extend it to descriptions of propositions or classifications, such as in grammatical or logical contexts ([13], [14], [15]). This multifaceted usage highlights the word’s evolution in literary and philosophical discourse, where its meaning can pivot from moral absolutes to rhetorical emphasis on decisiveness.
- But when I conceive a categorical imperative, I know at once what it contains.
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant - How is a Categorical Imperative Possible?
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant - If now it is found that this rule is practically right, then it is a law, because it is a categorical imperative.
— from The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant - This imperative is categorical.
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant - On the contrary, the moral, and therefore categorical, imperative says: "I ought to do so and so, even though I should not wish for anything else."
— from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals by Immanuel Kant - It is the expression of living interest, preference, and categorical choice.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Strict becomes stricter; categorical answer, as to this Coblentz work and much else, shall be given.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle - There is no categorical imperative nor any disciplines, even within the walls of a monastery (—it is always possible to leave—).
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Whereupon Schopenhauer gave utterance to the following outburst: “An intelligible Categorical Imperative!
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Kant, too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his practical reason.
— from The Antichrist by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - no one's having thought Kant's Categorical Imperative dangerous to life! ...
— from The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer. The Antichrist by Nietzsche - that new, immoral, or at least "amoral" " â priori " and that "categorical imperative" which was its voice (but oh!
— from The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - The formal distinction of syllogisms renders their division into categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive necessary.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant - As to Modality . Categorical. Problematical. Hypothetical.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant - That is a categorical proposition, which consists of a nominative case and a categorem, as for instance, “Dion is walking.”
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius
