Triad (culture)

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The triad , the philosophical trinity or trinity thinking , also called trialism, represents a form of dialectic that is used, among other things, to represent the socially real human culture as a connecting “third” between ought and being.

The threefold, the triad, of the methods forms its basis. Triadic thinking closes epistemological gaps between dyadic thinking, method dualism on the one hand and colorful method pluralism on the other.

use

The terms triad, trinity thinking or trialism are used far less than those of dualism, in which trialism is also partly treated as a sub-form. But its manifestations are often used. In the English-speaking world, the Latin term " tripartite " is also used for the triple form .

The three most well-known trinity formulas, each affecting human culture, from the Western point of view, are:

  • "God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" ( religion ),
  • "Freedom, equality and solidarity (fraternity)" ( politics ),
  • "Body, soul and spirit" ( image of man ).

The state law also knows the Trinities of " executive , legislative and judicial branches " and "state people, state power and territory."

A Popper's three worlds is already of Gottlob Frege demanded (1918) as a necessary "third realm". Karl Popper later used the term "World 3" .

Justification and criticism of the three worlds doctrine

The rationale for this triad is as follows: The socially real (western) culture complements, includes and endures the bipolar duality of (idealistic) philosophy and (empirical) natural sciences. The socially real view of the social sciences and the philosophical approaches of phenomenology and pragmatism lead to something third.

The legal philosopher Gustav Radbruch uses the broad concept of culture for this: “Nature and ideal, and across the gap between them ... the never-ending bridging of culture ...” and then professes to the method of “trialism”. In his legal philosophy, Axel Montenbruck builds on Radbruch's trialism. Montenbruck also describes "... with the word of the" middle world "the" socially real place "..." which western man "... could understand as his own and largely self-created socially real civilization." With this he locates the socially real Reality of culture and replaces the concept of culture with the more political one of "civilization".

Seen critically, the triadic thinking includes the tendency towards the holism , it leads to a relativism and tends to the theory-poor kind of pragmatism. Against the pluralism of the methods, it again appears to be an inadmissible simplification. Because, on closer inspection, every specialist science has its own method of thinking.

Trialism and dualism

From the mostly bipolar view of dualism, the triadic views can always be traced back to a duality. Trialism then appears as a subspecies of dualism , which is why triadic thinking is also discussed under this term. But from a triadic point of view, conversely, in every dual opposition, side-by-side or even togetherness, for example of being and ought, the germ of something common third.

The Aristotelian doctrine of the in itself indescribable “ middle ” between two extremes (“The extremes seem to oppose each other because the middle has no name”) or the view that fundamentally requires a reasonable balance between different values ​​use the form of the triadic thinking.

Triadic thinking and dialectics

The simplest formula for dialectical thinking is: thesis , antithesis and synthesis . While this often has a dynamic character, with synthesis appearing as the higher goal, trialism, like the triads as a rule, embodies a static trinity. Its three elements appear to be of the same quality and at most have different weights.

Individual orientations and teachings

Triadic thinking and Christian trinity

Christian triadic thinking describes the concept of the Trinity .

The "trinity" in philosophy and science

The common history and current three-worlds teachings in philosophy and science are discussed in detail in connection with dualism . In particular, Karl Popper's three-world theory is one of them. His third world comprises the objectified cultural goods, which sociobiologists, analogous to genes, also call memes .

Three Worlds Doctrine and Real Social Law

The law, which itself is primarily to be understood as normative, places people from a social point of view before the everyday task of either combining ought and being or living with its polarity, i.e. the constant breach of law. To this end, people form and cultivate their own legal cultures. In animistic civilizations, these are rites for dealing with taboos .

Hermann Kantorowicz (1925) developed a “three-world doctrine” or “epistemological trialism” for law. A distinction should be made between

  • Sensory sciences,
  • Values ​​science and
  • Reality Sciences.

Gustav Radbruch also avows himself to trialism in his legal philosophy (1932) and he also opens his approach to a fourth, the religious view: “... This is how the transition is made from a dualism to a trialism of the ways of looking at things (if one here goes from the fourth, disregarding the religious perspective). This trialism turns the legal philosophy into a cultural philosophy of law. "

The legal sociologist Hubert Rottleuthner joins the "Trinity thinkers" and offers the following triad, which is also applied to the law:

  • "Logical, conceptual analysis (legal theory)",
  • "Descriptive, empirical (legal sociology)",
  • "Normative, practical (legal philosophy)".

Triadic thinking and democracy

The legal philosopher Axel Montenbruck regards the three elements of the democratic creed “freedom, equality and solidarity” initially as powerful individual ideas and then sees them as a totality of osmotic enzell-like subsystems in the sense of Niklas Luhmann : “All three ideas, freedom, equality and solidarity , therefore support each other. Together they form a network that offers more than the simple sum of its elements. For this reason alone, it is more appropriate to sanctify all three basic ideas, for example as the humane and in the sense of a “democratic constitutional humanism”. Of course, these three ideas are also in competition with one another. The “good”, common sense or also practical reason, consists in the “art” of extracting the best from all three main ideas according to the circumstances and in concrete terms. However, one point of view will have to take priority. In the West there is a system whose triad runs in this order: First there is freedom of the free. "

Three worlds model and naturalism

Gerhard Vollmer places the social mesocosm of man between the macrocosm and the microcosm and also poses the question of whether anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) can leave the mesocosm at all from an evolutionary perspective.

literature

  • Arthur Kaufmann: Problem History of Legal Philosophy , in: Arthur Kaufmann , Winfried Hassemer , Ulfrid Neumann (eds.), Introduction to Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory of the Present, 8th Edition, Heidelberg, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8252-0593-5
  • Joachim Fischer : The third. On the anthropology of intersubjectivity . In: Wolfgang Eßbach (ed.), Identity and Alterity in Theory and Method , Würzburg: Ergon, 2000, pp. 103-136.
  • Michael Giesecke : Triadic Media and Information Theories, in: Ders .: The discovery of the communicative world. Frankfurt a. M.2007, p. 217 ff.
  • Gesa Lindemann : The third person - the constitutive minimum of social theory . In: Hans-Peter Krüger / Gesa Lindemann (eds.), Philosophical Anthropology in the 21st Century , Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2006, pp. 125–145.
  • Axel Montenbruck : Democratic preamble humanism. Western civil religion and universal triad "Nature, Soul and Reason" , 4th again considerably expanded edition, 2013, 441 p., Series civil religion. A Philosophy of Law as a Philosophy of Culture, Volume I - Fundamentals, Free University of Berlin, open access ( Open Access )
  • Axel Montenbruck : Middle world and three-middle man. Socially real dehumanization and civilization as synthetic pragmatism , 2nd considerably expanded (partial) edition, 2013, 374 p., Series civil religion. A Philosophy of Law as a Philosophy of Culture, Volume IV - Holistic Superstructure, Free University of Berlin, open access ( Open Access ).
  • Dietmar von der Pfordten : description, evaluation, prescription. Trialism and trifunctionalism as the linguistic foundations of ethics and law , writings on legal theory 155, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3428076982 .
  • Gustav Radbruch : Philosophy of Law (1932), Ralf Dreier, Ralf, Stanley L. Paulson (eds.), 2nd edition Heidelberg, 2003.
  • Hubert Rottleuthner : Legal Theory and Legal Sociology , Freiburg, Munich, 1981.
  • Gerhard Vollmer : Can we leave the social mesocosm? , in: Jürgen Mittelstraß (ed.): The future of knowledge . XVIII. German Congress for Philosophy (Konstanz 1999). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 340–352.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gustav Radbruch: Philosophy of Law (1932), Ralf Dreier, Ralf, Stanley L. Paulson, (eds.), 2nd edition Heidelberg, 2003, § 1, 11 (3.4); approving: Axel Montenbruck: civil religion. A philosophy of law I. Foundations: Western “democratic preamble humanism” and universal triad “nature, soul and reason” , 3rd considerably expanded edition, 2011, 32 ff, University Library of the Free University of Berlin ( Open Access )
  2. ^ Axel Montenbruck: civil religion. A philosophy of law III. Superstructure: democratic humanism, socially real dehumanization, dissolution to the synthetic pragmatism of the “middle world”. University Library of the Free University of Berlin, 2010, 184 (Open Access)
  3. ^ Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics , 11266, Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-008586-1 (Translator: Franz Dirlmeier )
  4. ^ Hermann Kantorowicz, Staatsauffassungen (1925), in: Thomas Würtenberger (ed.), Hermann Kantorowicz, Jurisprudence and Sociology , Karlsruhe, 1962, pp. 69–81; Hermann Kantorowicz: The law - a summary of its methodology (1928), in: Thomas Würtenberger (Hg), Kantorowicz, law and sociology , Karlsruhe, 1962, p. 83 ff; see also Hubert Rottleuthner, legal theory and legal sociology , Freiburg, Munich, pp. 13 ff, 17 f.
  5. ^ Gustav Radbruch: Rechtsphilosophie (1932), Ralf Dreier, Ralf, Stanley L. Paulson, (ed.), 2nd edition Heidelberg, 2003, § 1, 11 (3.4). Explained by Arthur Kaufmann: Problem History of Legal Philosophy , in: Arthur Kaufmann , Winfried Hassemer , Ulfrid Neumann (eds), Introduction to Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory of the Present , 8th edition Heidelberg, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8252-0593-5 , 89 ff.
  6. ↑ Hubert Rottleuthner: Legal theory and legal sociology , Freiburg, Munich, 1981, pp. 13 ff, 17, 19
  7. ^ Axel Montenbruck : Democratic preamble humanism. Western civil religion and universal triad “Nature, Soul and Reason” , 4th again considerably expanded edition, 2013, p. 318, series civil religion. A Philosophy of Law as a Philosophy of Culture, Volume I - Foundation, Freie Universität Berlin, open accesshttp: //edocs.fu-berlin.de/docs/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDOCS_derivate_000000002457/Zivilreligion_I__4._Aufl..pdf? Hosts = Open Access
  8. ↑ Gerhard Vollmer: Can we leave the social mesocosm? , in: Jürgen Mittelstraß (ed.): The future of knowledge . XVIII. German Congress for Philosophy (Konstanz 1999). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 340–352