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 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 furthest from us but most perfect in itself. 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 a hylomorphic reality, though, any particular thing 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 and in the universal sense, along with its component identities, both those which are expected of it as this kind of thing, and those which are unique to it as an individual. Again in the order of knowing, this is both the individual thing and its corresponding universal idea. But this thing cannot be known without a knowledge of its accidents because we always know through the senses first. Hence Aristotle begins this unraveling of human experience with the four Pre-Categories of things. 

To get more specific, the possibility of predicating something about 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 in 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 this as being said of or being predicated of. This is in contradistinction to being present in a thing. Being of something is a reference to substance and the whole of that thing. Being in something is a reference to an accident and being a part of the larger whole of that thing. 

Also needs to be understood here is subject, 

Considering the combination of substance, accidents, and subject, there is generated four possible categories of predication.

The 10 Proper Categories (How do the 10 proper categories relate to the 4 pre-categories?)

The 10 categories reflect the more specific ways that the four pre-categories are expressed in the particular subject. 

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 and species. The basic truth that these terms express is that the many have both similarities and dissimilarities in their existence. (This idea is fundamental to the Pre-Socratic philosophers who sought to explain the paradox of change and stability, which is the same thing) Any particular thing is not just a name, but has an inherent structure which consists of a layering of 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"; and this continues all the way up (hence why there must be a transcendent first being which is not a combination of two factors, but pure being (act)) and all the way down the hierarchy (hence why there must be an immanent first matter which is not a combination of two factors, but pure possibility (to build or receive forms)). The one, form, and substance on one level is also the part, matter, and accident on a higher level. This is also expressed in Porphyry's Tree. 

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 

Substance Versus Quality 

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

What it Means to Give a Proper Definition

Properly locating 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. And then going from there into the other categories. 

Difficulties and Clarifications

To be completed at a later date...