CATEGORICAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Categorical

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/kˌætəgˈɑrɪkəl/ /kˌætəgˈɔrɪkəl/ Listen

adjective

Categorical adj.

Of or pertaining to a category.

Not hypothetical or relative; admitting no conditions or exceptions; declarative; absolute; positive; express; as, a categorical proposition, or answer. "The scriptures by a multitude of categorical and intelligible decisions... distinguish between the things seen and temporal and those that are unseen and eternal."

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Etymology of 'Categorical'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Categorical" Quotes from Famous Books

... must have been great; he could not understand these dilatory measures, these expressions of affection which never led to a categorical approbation. It seemed to him that he had said all that he had to say. For new arguments ...

— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... the English Government presented to the world by the king and his ministers. Let us now hear what the personages so heartily reviled by them had to say for themselves. The Rev. C.P. Meehan has brought to light the categorical narratives, which the earls dictated, and which had lain unpublished among the 'old historic rolls,' in the Public Record Office, London. These documents are of great historic interest, as are many other state-papers now first published in his valuable work.[1] O'Neill's ...

— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... skeleton of belief such as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One either believed it, or one did not. Unless—Did anybody ever believe any one thing in its unmodified entirety? Did anybody ever give a categorical denial to any clause of any creed? That was the worst of the whole matter. Half-doubts and half-beliefs crisscrossed and interlaced at every point. One day's doctrine was the next day's error. It was well-nigh impossible to draw a straight line, no matter how short, ...

— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... keystone of an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,' and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A morality of 'eudaemonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal ...

— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"—makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask—in ...

— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

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