Aristotle's Categories: Unveiling Ancient Philosophy

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On Aristotle’s Categories and His Platonic Commentators Aristotle’s categories have played a significant role in the history of philosophy and science. But most of us barely know what they are. A longish thread:

In the following, I want to outline the main categories and some ancient criticism of them to help situate Aristotle within his time and place. ARISTOTLE Aristotle (384–322 BC) famously argued for ten categories that describe reality. Aristotle explains:

“Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being-affected” (Categories §4).

Of the ten categories, substance stands in special place since it describes a persistent subject, which Aristotle calls prime substance. By contrast, secondary substance refers to the substance’s species and genus.

For example, this man speaks of prime substance, while calling this man a man (species) and animal (genus) refer to secondary substances.

This man (primary substance) may be in a city (where), while having a sword in his hand. That illustrates both the simplicity of Aristotle’s categories. And it goes a ways in explaining why they became standard ways to describe the world.

One area where Aristotle’s Categories became controversial, however, was his view of the relationship between primary and secondary substances.

Aristotle sees primary substances (this man, this horse) as the reason why other things exist and as more substantial than species or genera (§6). He writes, “So if the primary substances did not exist it would be impossible for any of the other things to exist” (§6).

A later little he concludes that substances as primary subjects are “substances most of all” (§6).

While reasonable, on the face of it, Aristotle appears to deny Plato’s thesis that Forms are prior to individual substances. Aristotle here apparently reverses the order of reality: the substantial subject comes first and the universal species and genera are less substantial.

PORPHYRY However, not everyone took Aristotle in that way. For example, Porphyry (AD 234–305) argues that Aristotle's Categories refer specifically to logical arguments, not to being or things as such (On Aristotle Categories, 57.–5; pp 32–33).

He argues the case tightly on the basis of the title of Aristotle’s work and the internal argument itself. In short, Porphyry sees Aristotle as outlining how we speak about everyday objects in the physical world. He denies that Aristotle refers to being as such.

This is important for Porphyry because, as noted, Aristotle appears to argue that substances are prior to their abstract categories (species, genera). Put another, Aristotle seems to deny Plato’s argument that Forms are prior to individual experience.

Steven K. Strange explains Porphyry’s argument in this way:

Aristotle calls particular substances primary substances in the Categories, according to Porphyry, because he is there discussing the classification of significant expressions, and these apply primarily to sensible individuals, and only secondarily to the abstracted universals

that are predicated of them.For the primary purpose of language is to communicate about ordinary things and their individual properties (91,8-9).

Abstracted universals for Porphyry, unlike the real universals, the Platonic Forms, have a merely conceptual existence, and are indeed posterior to sensible things.[1]

In other words, Porphyry sees Aristotle as talking about abstractions like this trout is a fish (species) and animal (genus). These abstractions truly do follow from the primary substance (this trout).

They are thus “posterior to sensible things.” By contrast, Platonic forms remain prior to sensible things.

Strange notes: “Thus the Aristotelian abstractable universals that are the referents of general terms can be included in our ontology alongside the Platonic Forms: they are immanent universals, the Forms are transcendent universals and the causes both of sensibles and of immanent

universals.”[2] Porphyry may not be too far afield. Aristotle in Posterior Analytics 1.2 (71b29–72a5) does indeed argue that universals precede sensible objects in the order of nature and in the order of relation to us.

So perhaps Porphyry rightly believes Aristotle’s categories fit into a Platonic philosophy in agreeable ways. PLOTINUS

On the other hand, Plotinus (d. AD 270) in his Enneads (6.1–3) rejects the tenfold Categories of Aristotle for a fivefold scheme, that he derives from Plato. He affirms that Being, Motion, Rest, Identity, and Difference make up five primary genera (6.2.7–8).

Part of the reason why Plotinus rejects Aristotle has to do with the rational use of the categories themselves. Do they refer to only physical entities? Or also metaphysical ones? Do they actually make sense?

Plotinus for his part sees the categories as returning to unity, and so Motion and Rest describes the movement of life and substance. Identity and difference refer to the identity or difference of posterior things to Being (6.2.8).

In any case, Plotinus does not find Aristotle’s categories to fit into his Neoplatonic philosophy easily, even if Porphyry does. NOTES

The controversy surrounding Universals/Forms being prior to or posterior largely depends on whether or not one sees Aristotle as a follower of Plato. If Aristotle follows Plato directly, then finding textual evidence for his agreement on Forms seems reasonable.

After all, the potentially confusing passages that seem to contradict really must be talking about different things.

But if one sees Aristotle as setting himself against Plato, as many seem to do, then the seeming contradictions in Aristotle will be affirmed without an attempt to harmonize them.

[1] applewebdata://B2D59A9B-8EA8-4BC2-8CD3-E72AAA3554C4#_ftnref1 Steven K. Strange, trans. Porphyry: On Aristotle Categories (London, Bloomsbury, 1992), 10. [2] applewebdata://B2D59A9B-8EA8-4BC2-8CD3-E72AAA3554C4#_ftnref2 Strange, Porphyry, 11.