The Categories
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~14,700 words · 70 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). The Categories. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-categories
- MLAAristotle. "The Categories." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-categories.
- ChicagoAristotle. The Categories. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-categories.
What it is about
The text with which Western logic began: the list of the ten basic ways of saying something about a thing.
Context and history
Substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, having, doing, being affected. The list is short and so is the book, but the idea behind it settled two thousand years of metaphysics: that among all the things which can be said there is one that exists in its own right — primary substance, this man, this horse — and everything else exists only by being said of it. Boethius translated it into Latin, and through the Middle Ages it was, together with Porphyry's introduction, the first book anyone read on beginning to study: the quarrel of universals comes out of it. It opened the 'Organon', the body of Aristotle's logical writings, and it is short by nature; the difficulties are there all the same.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Things are said to be named 'equivocally' when, though they have a common name, the definition corresponding with the name differs for each. Thus, a real man and a figure in a picture can both lay claim to the name 'animal'; yet these are equivocally so named, for, though they have a common name, the definition corresponding with the name differs for each. For should any one define in what sense each is an animal, his definition in the one case will be appropriate to that case only. On the other hand, things are said to be named 'univocally' which have both the name and the definition answering to the name in common. A man and an ox are both 'animal', and these are univocally so named, inasmuch as not only the name, but also the definition, is the same in both cases: for if a man should state in what sense each is an animal, the statement in the one case would be identical with that in the other. Things are said to be named 'derivatively', which derive their name from some other name, but differ from it in termination. Thus the grammarian derives his name from the word 'grammar', and the courageous man from the word 'courage'. Part 2 Forms of speech are either simple or composite. Examples of the latter are such expressions as 'the man runs', 'the man wins'; of the former 'man', 'ox', 'runs', 'wins'. Of things themselves some are predicable of a subject, and are never present in a subject. Thus 'man' is predicable of the individual man, and is never present in a subject. By being 'present in a subject' I do not mean present as parts are present in a whole, but being incapable of existence apart from the said subject. Some things, again, are present in a subject, but are never predicable of a subject. For instance, a certain point of grammatical knowledge is present in the mind, but is not predicable of any subject; or again, a certain whiteness may be present