Summative Essay on Aristotle's "Categories" - By Stephen Beach

At its heart, the Categories is an attempt to provide a consistent template to determine what any thing is. The complexity of reality requires, though, that in order to be able to think and speak we must first untangle the layers of the thing we are thinking and speaking about. And so before logic can really begin as a formal system we must have a clear way by identifying the components that make up any particular thing we encounter. 

The Order of Knowing and the Order of Being

The text has a pedagogical element in that logic begins inversely from metaphysics. Logic begins with the human experience, that which is closer to us, while the first metaphysical principles begin with what is most perfect in itself but furthest from us. Aristotle is aware of the difference between the order of knowing and the order of being. The order of knowing is the order of human development and experience. Learning begins through the senses with an encounter with an undefined world. 

Naming and the Importance of Boundaries 

With the power of “naming” and using names we are able to begin to put limits on that which presents itself to our experience; to begin separating one thing as different from another thing, this thing from that thing. Naming is not the same as defining, but it’s the start of delimiting reality. It is the first step towards moving from just uttering an associated sound to penetrating the nature of a thing to make a statement of its thinghood. 

The Pre-Categories (The Four Types of Predicates Which Can Said About a Subject)

What man encounters in his experience, most fundamentally, is “this something,” or "tode ti". In experiencing any particular thing we begin to see that "this something" is not just one layer, but a unity of four layers. It has at once a particular organic unity as a whole thing, both in the individual sense (Socrates) and in the universal sense (Man). It also has component identities, both those which are expected of it as this kind of thing (Rational, Bipedal, etc), and those which are unique to it as an individual (bald, snub-nosed). These four layers in any particular subject encountered in the world represent (1) Universal Essence (2) Individual Essence (3) Universal Accidents (4) Individual Accidents. Hence Aristotle begins this unraveling of human experience with the four Pre-Categories of things. 

To get more specific, the possibility of saying anything about "this something" is the same as predicating something about a subject. This predicating something of a subject revolves around two modes of existing - the accidental and the substantial. The accidental is that which always exists in another, never on its own. The substantial is that which exists of itself. Another way of thinking about this is that is that accidents are always parts in a whole, whereas substances refer to wholes, not parts. Aristotle refers to substances as being said of or being predicated of a particular subject. This is in contradistinction to being present in a thing as a part of the larger whole of that thing, by which Aristotle is referring to an accident. 

The word Aristotle uses for subject is "hupokeimenon" in Attic, which means literally "that which lays under". Hence, any time I encounter a "this something" I am encountering a unified whole which has an identity that lays under its accidental qualities or parts. So, properly speaking, "subject" here refers to an actually existing individual substance. 

The 10 Proper Categories 

If the four pre-categories are the four ways in which predication can happen (something can be said of a subject), then what are the ten proper categories that Aristotle addresses next? Using the analogy to structure and inhabitants, we could say that the four pre-categories are the structure of a house, and the ten proper categories are the inhabitants of the house. In other words, the four pre-categories give us the four categories of types of things that can be said of any particular individual: We can speak of an individual's universal essence, particular essence, universal accidents, and particular accidents. But it is the ten categories that give us the ability to fill this structure with content, What type of universal substance? How much of a thing? What type of qualities does it have? When does it exist? Where does it exist? and so on. 

Substance (As a whole) 

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Quantity (Intrinsic Parts)

Quality (Intrinsic Parts)

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Relation (Extrinsic and Intrinsic Parts) 

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Position (Extrinsic Part)

Possession (Extrinsic Part)

Place (Extrinsic Part)

Time (Extrinsic Part)

Action (Extrinsic Part)

Passion (Extrinsic Part)

The Hierarchy and Classification of Being 

"The Categories" is also an incredibly important text for none other than the simple fact it introduces the idea and terminology of genus (genus) and species (eidos). The basic truth that these terms express is that the many have both similarities and dissimilarities in their existence. Any particular thing is not just a name, but has an inherent structure which consists of a layering of many objective identities.  Predication (categorizing) means to begin to relate the many together through their inherent similarities and differences in their many identities. Hence, a genus is a grouping based on commonality, with species being a sub-grouping of genus in which a specific difference is introduced to further classify those members of the genus apart from each other. 

Now these terms are relative in nature, and so the genus at one level may be the species of a higher level of organization, or vice versa. This relative structure is also reflected similarly in the "one and many", "matter and form", and "substance and accidents". All of these pairs are, in a certain sense, relative to the level of abstraction that one is examining them on, just like we said with "genus and species"

Sidenote*

This continues all the way up, so to speak, and all the way down the hierarchy. Hence why there must be a transcendent first being which is not a combination of two factors, but pure being (actuality), and why there must be an immanent first-matter which is not a combination of two factors, but pure possibility (to potentially build or receive forms). So too in the hylomorphic middle, where the structure of existence acts as a type of template through which the actuality of prime matter flows. So in a certain sense, there is the One, the template, and the possibility to be. (The template and the possibility to be are united in reality and only separated theoretically in our minds.) The one, form, and substance on one level is also the part, matter, and accident on a higher level. 

These realities are expressed in Porphyry's Tree, and in other more detailed classifications of existence. 

What it Means to Give a Proper Definition

Having created a unifying hierarchy of being, how does one properly define any particular thing? Well, one can locate the thing within the hierarchy of being, then adding its closest genus to that key quality which makes it to be what it is most fully, the specific difference, will produce a helpful definition. If one cannot identify what it is that makes something to be most fully distinct from other members of its genus, then one can go from there into the other categories which might set it apart. 

Defining, then, is a statement about the closest genus and specific difference to the individual existing thing. This also means that implied in the definition of a thing are all the identities which are left unstated, but in which the most relevant genus and specific difference are nested. Aristotle mentions this but does not necessarily use the word "intension". Intension, though, referring to all the identities of a particular thing up the tree of being. So a man is a rational animal, but also living, a substance, and a created being. Intension is inverse from extension, which refers to the number of actually existing particulars of that grouping. So the extension of man would be the world's population, say 8 billion or so. 

It can also be confusing navigating the tree of classification when the same word can be used in more than one way. This has to do with the "supposition" of terms. When terms are not clearly defined, mistakes can be made because words can be used "homonymously", "synonymously", or "paronymously". Sometimes the words "univocally", "equivocally", and "analogously" are used as well. Homonymous/equivocal usage of words refers to people using the same word, but with totally different meanings: "spring" as a fount of water and "spring" as the season. Synonymously/univocally means that two uses of the same word are used and have the same meanings to them. Man is an animal and a cow is an animal. Paronymously/analogously refers to two uses of words and meanings that are both similar and different. God is just. Humans are just. 

Aristotle also indirectly references what is called "supposition" when he talks about the difference between a real man and a painting of a man in chapter one. One might notice that the same word will be repeated in many different parts of the tree of classification of being. "Man" the verbal symbol is different from "man" the concept, is different from "man" as Socrates, is different from the painting of a "man". 

Sidenote*

Interestingly, using our tree of classification, if we move towards whatever thing in question from the top of the chart, it represents moving along the order of being, while moving towards the thing in question from the bottom of the chart represents moving according to the order of knowing. 

The Whole and its Boundaries - On Substance

One of the key notions which The Categories introduces is that of substance, or ousia. There are two types of ousia, primary and secondary, which respectively refer to the individual existing thing and then to its universal essence. The important thing here, though, is that substances have to do with either organic or artificial wholes which exist as wholes. For organic things, what makes something to be a whole? Well they are produced by parents of the same essence, for one. Secondly, they exist in themselves. In other words there is a unity to them which clearly distinguishes their boundaries from other things around them. The mind is able to pick up on this and to abstract the unity that belongs to a thing as this particular universal essence. Both quantity and quality play a part in the process of identifying a substance, though those things are not synonymous with substance because they do not exist of themselves but always in another. 

The Parts and its Boundaries - On Quantity

What Allows Us to Identify Proper Boundaries? - On Quality 

The Modern Misconception Between Substance and Quality 

Being Which Manifests In Relation To reality, to others, to opposites

Difficulties and Clarifications

To be completed at a later date...