Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

As Triad (Greek trias to genitive: Triados ) - actually: Trinity; figuratively also three step - are marked philosophical concepts which contain such a three- step as a fundamental structural feature. Already Aristotle has referred in the first chapter of his physics that the Trinity is alone able to describe the Will. In De Caelo Aristotle pointed out that the Trinity is the number of the whole, because it encompasses the beginning, middle and end. ( De Caelo, I, 268 a 12 c), the triad plays a central role, for example, with regard to:

• The emanation of Proclus,
• The theory of categories in Immanuel Kant,
• The dialectical principle of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel or
• The semiotic structure with Charles S. Peirce.

In Proclus the emergence of the world is from the one described first cause in a stepwise process in a process of flowing out ( emanation ). Everything real is from the emerged one and turns into a three-step from His life and thought back to its origin.

In Kant are the four functions of the categories (quantity, quality, relation and modality ) each summary of a group of three categories, in each of which the third term is forming from the original two, eg from the unity and the multiplicity derives from the totality. The three basic questions Kant's form a trinity (knowledge, ethics, faith) as well as the regulative ideas ( world soul, God or freedom, immortality, and infinity ). However, Kant has never formed a triadic principle.

According to Hegel, Kant held before that he used the trinity, but not their meaning had recognized as a fundamental principle. The Hegelian triad consists in the elements of being, essence and concept, which have their counterpart in the science of logic, philosophy of nature and the Phenomenology of Spirit. From the term results in the triad of the subjective concept of the object and the idea. The subjective concept is divided again into the concept as such, the verdict and the conclusion. Accordingly, becoming the third of being and nothingness, the opposition, the Third of identity and difference, or the measure of the Third of quality and quantity. Dialectic method is not only simple, but a reality ausmachendes principle, which leads to the universality of the movement of all things, for Hegel. This dialectical structure is reflected in the introduced by Schelling scheme of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, in which the three moments General, special and One are related to each other. For Trinity Schelling remarked:

Developed by Peirce semiotics is based on the triad of object, sign and interpretant. According to Peirce 's thinking exclusively in characters who mediate between the subject and the object. Each character has the basic categories of Firstness ( individuality in itself; feeling), secondness (difference in time and space; wool) and thirdness ( relation to an Other; thinking). On this basis, Peirce developed a theory of signs, which started again from a structure in trichotomies. Analog structured Peirce also the scientific process in the three- step of abduction, deduction and induction.

A systematic tripartite division is also found in the three-world theory.

• Epistemology
• Metaphysics
• Dialectic