Division (DIVISIONE) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, p. 1019

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

DIVISIONE. - PHILOSOPHY. - It is the logical operation by which a whole is resolved into its parts. Whereas definition aims at clarifying the content of a concept, division tends toward determining its extension.

It is twofold: real, when it refers to an ontological whole, e.g., the division of human nature into its essential parts or its operative principles; logical, when its object is the universal concept or term, e.g., the division of substance into material and spiritual. Logical division may be based on an essential or a purely accidental difference among the members of the division: in the first case the division is essential-intrinsic (e.g., the division of bodies into living and non-living); in the second case the division is called accidental or extrinsic (e.g., the division of bodies into light and heavy).

Division, an analytic moment in the acquisition of knowledge, responds to an intrinsic requirement of the structure of the human mind, and has an undoubted positive value in science when it is conducted with order, precision, measure, and rigorous conceptual determination, both of its foundation and of the respective members of the division.

BIBL.: Aristotele, Anal. pr., I, 31, 46 a 31; Anal. post., II, 13, 96 b 15; Top. VI, 6, 143 a 36; Cicerone, Topica, 5, 7, 8; G. Hegel, Scienza della logica, III, trad. II. di A. Moni, Bari 1925, pp. 305-12; Aristotele, Principi di logica, a cura di A. Carlini, Bari 1940, pp. 11-18; U. Viglino, Logica, Roma 1941, pp. 182-88. Ugo Viglino DIRITTO. – In law, d. is the division of a thing or of a body of assets into several parts (generally in order to assign them to the various persons entitled), or the subdivision of a territorial circumscription into several others of the same kind (v. CIRCOSCRIZIONI ECCLESIASTICHE), or finally the establishment of two or more entities out of one, which thereby comes to an end (in canon law, the most notable example of the latter case is found in the d. of a benefice).