The Pre Categories (types of subjects) - My Notes on Ch. 3.5 from "The Reasonable Person" by Mark Grannis

Types of Subjects
Before we can talk about the relationships between subject and predicate in the five predicables, we must first speak about the different types of subjects that are possible to speak about. These are known as the "pre-categories" in Aristotle. These types of subjects are essences, individuals, essential accidents, and incidental accidents. See my post here for more on the pre-categories. 

Universal and Inferior

One of the key relationships between subject and predicate is that of universal and inferior. Essence, as a subject, is an abstraction that no individual can completely embody, it always transcends them. Therefore, the relationship between the essence and the individual is called the "universal to the inferior". This is also a relationship which always must imply a species and a real individual, since genera, as broad groupings, do not have real existing inferiors. For example, no "animal" exists a such. This also can apply to essential versus incidental accidents as the same dichotomy applies. 

Grannis has a different take on this and expresses the terms thusly: 

"Universals, that is, they are concepts that extend to many things by virtue of some thing that they all have in common." "Inferior: any less extensive part of the group of things to which a universal refers."