Triad (philosophy)

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Triad or triad ('trinity', from ancient Greek τριάς triás , plural τριάδες triádes ) is a term from ancient Greek philosophy that also plays a role in modern systems. It describes a group of three related elements that together form a unit. As a technical term, "Trias" was first introduced in ancient times in Neo-Platonism , whereby the Neo-Platonists linked to older philosophical and religious concepts of the triad. Triadic-thinking Neo-Platonists, especially the late antique philosopher Proklos , represented an ontological concept according to which the world and thinking are structured by triads. The Neoplatonic triads are by their nature timeless givens, but a timeless connection is sometimes described metaphorically as a temporal sequence with three successive phases. In terms of this representation, the triad is also referred to as the “three step” in specialist literature.

In modern times, triadic thinking determines the dialectics of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , who resorted to Proclus' doctrine of triads. In the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce , each character has three aspects that logically represent a triadic relation.

Antiquity

Pre-Socratics and Classical

Already with the Pythagoreans , the religious-philosophical school founded by Pythagoras of Samos , which ran from the 6th to the 4th century BC. Existed, the three played an important role in numerology. According to a communication from Aristotle , the Pythagoreans taught that “all” and “all” were defined by the three number: “The end, middle and beginning form the number of the all, namely that of the triad.” Aristotle linked his report on the conception the Pythagoreans have their own thoughts on the three number. He pointed out the considerable religious significance of the Triassic : "That is why we have taken this number from nature as if it were one of its laws, and use it in the cultic worship of the gods." He also meant an indication of in linguistic usage To have found an important natural function of the three: Call two things “both” and two people “both”, but not “all”; the term “all” is only used for things that are at least three. This is how language proceeds “because nature itself prompts us to do so”. In addition, Aristotle stated that the special position of the three also shows in geometry, since the world is three-dimensional; there is no further size - a fourth dimension - "because the three corresponds to everything and 'three times' means as much as 'completely'". Therefore, of all geometric quantities, only the body is perfect, since only it is three-dimensional (“determined by the three number”). In the first book of his physics , Aristotle examined the question of whether a duality or a trinity of principles should be applied to the processual objects of nature. He came to the conclusion that, depending on the point of view, each of the two approaches could be considered to be correct, but from the point of view relevant here it is necessary to add a third element to the two members of a pair of opposites, which are principles, which must underlie them. Thus three principles can be assumed.

In the Platonic Academy , the philosophy school founded by Plato in Athens, the special status of the trinity was discussed early on. Plato's pupil Xenocrates , who from 339/338 to 314/313 BC Chr. Scholarch (head) of the academy considered the universe to be triadic. He taught that there are three kinds of being ( Ousia ): the first is the being of the sensually perceptible, the second the being of the intelligible (only spiritually comprehensible), the third is composed of the first and the second. The intelligible can be scientifically grasped, the sensually perceptible can be experienced through perception; the mixed is the subject of opinions that are partly true and partly false.

Middle Platonism

In the period of Middle Platonism (1st century BC to 3rd century AD) the idea of ​​triads was taken up. In the 1st century AD, the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria assumed three acts of creation: the creation of the intelligible world, that of the sensually perceptible sky and that of sublunar (below the lunar sphere) things including all material earthly objects. God himself is the immediate cause of the creation of the intelligible world, he has brought about heaven indirectly through his power of generation and the realm of material objects also indirectly through his royal power. Philon referred to the Pythagorean doctrine of trinity. The Middle Platonist Plutarch also discussed the special status of the trinity. He found that the threesome was essentially perfect. It is the first of the odd numbers (the 1 was not included in this classification at the time) and the beginning of the multiplicity. It contains "mixed together and fused into a unity the first differences and the elements of every further number". The Middle Platonist Numenios , who lived in the 2nd century , assumed three gods (or, viewed differently, three aspects of deity). He imagined the first, supreme god to be only being and not acting, very far from matter, simple and unmoved. In the system of Numenios, the second god is subordinate to the highest god, the creator god ( Demiurge ); it is moved and gives rise to the idea of ​​the cosmos. Becoming can be traced back to him, being to the first God. In that the demiurge not only creates, organizes and directs the intelligible world, but also the world that can be perceived by the senses, i.e., deals with matter, he appears as the third god. The Middle Platonist and New Pythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa apparently adopted a triadic structure of the world.

Neo-Platonist and church writer

Already Plotinus (205-270), the founder of Neo-Platonism, and his student Porphyry attended triadic structures in their metaphysical models. So Plotinus expressed the dynamic unity of the mind with the triad “thinking, thinking, thought” or “intellect ( nous ), act of thought, object of thought”. A systematically elaborated doctrine of the triads can only be grasped by the late ancient Neo-Platonist Proklos († 485). As the long-time director of the Athens School of Philosophy, Proklos had a strong influence on the last pagan thinkers of antiquity.

For Proclus, the starting point was the confrontation with a central problem in Neo-Platonism: the question of the reasons why there can be unity in multiplicity and multiplicity in unity. According to the proclical theory, these reasons lie in the "triadic shape" (schḗma triadikón) of beings. The triadic principle enables unity and difference to be “at the same time”; the triad is unity in difference. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that it comprises unity and duality and is itself the “mixture” (miktón) of both, with which the third element is added. The three elements that are united in a triad are both three aspects of a single reality and three parts of a causation process. As a principle, the triad establishes all being and thus all thinking: Since everything that is is structured triadically, the movement of thinking that pursues being must also be triadic. This structure manifests itself in a multitude of triads. Trinity can be recognized wherever the principles of identity and difference work together, where unity unfolds and thus creates multiplicity and the elements of multiplicity at the same time remain concentrated in unity.

One of the most important proclical triads is the trinity " péras (border, delimiting, enclosing), ápeiron (unlimited, shapeless, indefinite), miktón (mixture [of limitation and unlimited])". The principle of indeterminacy is “mightiness” that gives birth and gives birth; it brings forth life; the principle of limitation constitutes the “something” as such, the determinate, demarcated and thus definable. A “mixed” emerges from their interaction, the third element of the triad, being. This is how this triad explains the causal, timeless creation of being. Further triads are “Beingness ( Ousia ), Selbigkeit, otherness” and “Beginning, middle, end”. Of fundamental importance is the triad " monḗ (lingering, pausing ), próodos (emergence, progression), epistrophḗ (turning back, return)", in which Proclus saw the underlying and moving ground and the structural principle of spirit and thought in all other triads .

Since the concept of the Trinity of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, plays a central role in Christianity , it was obvious for ancient church writers to make the triadic thinking of the pagan philosophers fruitful for the speculation of the Trinity. Even before Proclus developed his triadic system, the theologians Marius Victorinus and Augustine , who were strongly influenced by Platonism , had worked with triads in their trinity speculations. Marius Victorinus understood God as the unity of the three powers (potentiae) being, living and thinking, assigning being God the Father, the life of Jesus Christ and thinking or knowing to the Holy Spirit . Augustine dealt with further triads ("memory, insight, will", "mind, knowledge, love", "being, knowing, willing"). He taught that the Trinity left its “traces” in every part of creation, but the three manifestations of the deity, which formed an indissoluble unity in God, could be separated in the created things, in which there are only images of the Trinity. Augustine's idea that there are “traces of the Trinity” (vestigia trinitatis) in creation continued to have an effect for a long time. Even in the Renaissance , humanists like Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola tried to find traces of the Trinity in the triads of Pagan ancient authors.

Modern

With Immanuel Kant , the four functions of the categories (quantity, quality, relation and modality ) are each the combination of a group of three categories, in each of which the third term emerges from the two original ones, e.g. B. from unity and multiplicity, allness is derived. The three basic questions of Kant also form a trinity ( knowledge , ethics , belief ) as do the regulative ideas ( world , soul , God or freedom , immortality and infinity ). Finally, in the foundation of the metaphysics of morals, there is a distinction between the practical rules of action as the formation of the category of modality into imperatives of skill (possibility), prudence (reality) and the categorical imperative (necessity). However, Kant never formed a triadic principle.

Accordingly, Hegel argued against Kant that he had used the trinity, but did not recognize its meaning as a fundamental principle. The Hegelian triad consists of the elements being , essence and concept , which have their correspondence in the science of logic , natural philosophy and the phenomenology of spirit . The term gives rise to the triad of the subjective term, the object and the idea. The subjective concept is again divided into the concept as such, the judgment and the conclusion. Accordingly, becoming is the third of being and nothing , contradiction is the third of identity and difference, or measure is the third of quality and quantity . For Hegel, dialectics is not just a mere method, but a principle that makes up reality and leads to the universality of the movement of all things.

This dialectical structure is reflected in the scheme of thesis , antithesis and synthesis introduced by Schelling , in which the three moments general , particular and individual are related to one another. Schelling remarked on the trinity:

"In recent times, after philosophy has introduced a trinity of concepts, as it were as a necessary type of reason , philosophical deductions of the doctrine of the Trinity have, one could almost say, become fashionable."

The semiotics developed by Charles S. Peirce is based on the triad of object, sign and interpreter. According to Peirce, thinking takes place exclusively in signs that mediate between the subject and the object. Each sign has the basic categories of firstness (individuality per se; feeling), secondness (difference in space and time; willing) and thirdness (relation to another; thinking). On this basis, Peirce developed a theory of signs, which again proceeded from a structure in trichotomies . Similarly, Peirce structured the scientific process into the three steps of abduction , deduction and induction .

A systematic tripartite division can also be found in the three worlds doctrine .

literature

Remarks

  1. Aristotle, Across the Sky 268a10-13.
  2. Aristotle, Across the Sky 268a13-15.
  3. Aristotle, Across the Sky 268a15-20.
  4. Aristotle, Across the Sky 268a6-10, 268a20-24.
  5. Aristotle, Physics 189a – 191a.
  6. Sextus Empiricus , Adversus mathematicos 7,147–149. See also John M. Dillon : The Middle Platonists , London 1977, p. 30 f.
  7. ^ John M. Dillon: The Middle Platonists , London 1977, p. 168 f.
  8. Plutarch, Fabius Maximus 4.
  9. On the doctrine of the gods of Numenios see Charles H. Kahn: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans , Indianapolis 2001, pp. 122–130; John Peter Kenney: Proschresis Revisited: An Essay in Numenian Theology . In: Robert J. Daly (Ed.): Origeniana Quinta , Leuven 1992, pp. 217-230; Eric Robertson Dodds : Numenios and Ammonios . In: Clemens Zintzen (Ed.): Der Mittelplatonismus , Darmstadt 1981, pp. 495-499; Michael Frede : Numenius . In: Rise and Decline of the Roman World , Vol. II.36.2, Berlin 1987, pp. 1034-1075, here: 1054-1070.
  10. ^ John M. Dillon: The Middle Platonists , London 1977, pp. 356 f.
  11. Fritz-Peter Hager: The Spirit and the One , Bern / Stuttgart 1970, pp. 309-315.
  12. Werner Beierwaltes: Proklos , 2nd, expanded edition, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 24-50; Veronika Maria Roth: Das Ewige Nun , Berlin 2008, pp. 111–113.
  13. Werner Beierwaltes: Proklos , 2nd, expanded edition, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 50–89; Friedemann Drews: Human free will and divine providence in Augustine, Proklos, Apuleius and John Milton , Vol. 1, Frankfurt 2009, pp. 262-291.
  14. Werner Beierwaltes: Proklos , 2nd, expanded edition, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 118-164; Dirk Cürsgen: Henologie und Ontologie , Würzburg 2007, pp. 63–65.
  15. Werner Beierwaltes: Proklos , 2nd, expanded edition, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 108–115; Edgar Wind : Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance , Frankfurt 1981, pp. 276-279, 284-291.
  16. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling: Philosophy of Revelation , Vol. 1, Darmstadt 1990 (reprint of the edition from 1858), p. 314.