Aristotle's categories

The present paper sets up a comparative analysis of the category of Quality in the cases of Aristotle and Hegel. Aristotle’s category of Quality, as it shows up in some illustrative paragraphs (Chapter 8 of the Categories and Metaphysics, D, 14), has two main meanings: a. the criterion for differentiating among individuals; b. the criterion that allows the grouping of individuals within the same species. The two meanings are not strictly separated, and this fact led, in time, to some mistakes.
For Hegel, Quality is – by contrast to Aristotle – strictly incorporated into a systematic categorial context. Belonging to the group of categories that are included into the Theory of Being, Quality proves itself to be complementary to the category of Essence, that belongs to the categorial group of the Theory of Essence. Quality fundamentally relates not to Quantity, but with Essence as reflected in itself. This conjoinment is not arbitrary, but constitutes a real revolution, a main event of thinking.

In this paper I discuss some issues concerning essentialism in Aristotle’s Categories.  Why would it be important, in the first place, to dedicate a paper to the notion of essence in the Categories and in the Topics?  Well, when Book VII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics starts unfolding the notion of essence, it keeps referring to regimentations that apparently derive from the writings collected under the heading Organon.  This is of particular interest, because the writings of the Organon do not engage with hylomorphism, while the essentialism of the Metaphysics culminates in the claim that forms are the essences of all things.  Thus, the sortal essentialism in the writings of the Organon seems to be distinct from the Metaphysics’ views about essential forms, but still plays a role in framing and preparing the latter theory.  Also, within the Organon it makes a major difference whether one refers to the role of essences within the theory of explanation in the Posterior Analytics, or whether one refers to the Categories and Topics that are little interested in causes and explanations.
Sections 1-3 are mostly preparatory; they try to set the stage for what follows.  Section 3 addresses a, as I think, pressing worry, namely that neither the Categories nor the Topics are meant to belong to Aristotle’s first philosophy (or to what we would call ‘metaphysics’).  How come then that they do deal with essences at all?  Or, to put it differently, what could be the status of the notion of essence in works that are dedicated to the method of dialectics?
Section 4 introduces the difference that has become known as the difference between ‘essential’ and ‘accidental’ predication.  Sections 5 and 6 address exegetical problems that have the potential to obscure or to question this difference.  In section 6, in particular, I suggest an interpretation of Aristotle’s terminology that admits a consistent reading of the whole treatise, resisting the temptations of ‘apostate’ readings).
Sections 7-9 turn to the notion of substance in the Categories, to primary and secondary substances and to the underlying criteria of substancehood.  On the one hand, it is crucial for a substance to be a substrate, in particular a substrate-for-inherence.  On the other hand, secondary substances have a job in ‘revealing’ what a primary substance is.  In this latter context, the Categories touches upon the notion of essence and implies at least two important essentialist claims, although in a very compressed way (as, e.g. the comparison to the Topics shows).  Perhaps one of the major upshots of this paper (concerning the differences between the Metaphysics and Categories/Topics with regard to essence) is formulated towards the end of section 9, where the differences between the secondary substances of the Categories and the substantial forms of the Metaphysics become obvious; whereas the latter ones are the cause-of-being of a compound substrate, the former ones just ‘reveal’, ‘disclose’ or ‘exhibit’ what a primary substance essentially is. 
The concluding section 10 browses the Categories for hints to the idea that at least some attributes – be they contingent, necessary or generically necessary – are by their nature connected with the essential kind of their substrate.  I suggest that the Categories’ famous distinction between being SAID OF and being IN (traditionally glossed as the difference between essential and accidental predication) is not so much about necessary and non-necessary predication, but about the difference between species membership and the possession of properties.

Seven folios at the Vatican Library (Vat. Syr. 586) constitute the only remaining part of a manuscript from the 13th century that contained a large commentary on the Categories of Aristotle. The text features an exchange between a pupil and a master, where the pupil either puts a question on a certain matter regarding the Categories or asks for a clarification to a lemma that is cited from it, to which the master attempts to offer a basic explanation. The extant part of this commentary, which deals with Aristotle’s concluding discussion on the category of quantity and his initial presentation of the relatives, with some noteworthy observations, is edited here for the first time from the partially mutilated folios with a translation and some annotations. The question of its date of composition, its possible author and some other relevant points are treated in the introduction. Visit also: http://learningroads.cfs.unipi.it/sga-9-2019/

Aristotle's Categories is a treatise that is mostly concerned with classifications. Many ancient commentators saw the Categories as closely connected with the Topics and some of the earliest mentions of this treatise in antiquity even used the title Before the Topics instead of Categories, thus indicating that it was seen as a sort of propaedeutic to the Topics, and thus as closely related to Aristotle's method of dialectic.  Still, the Categories offers a series of claims, most notably claims associated with the concept of substance (ousia) that we would rate as straightforwardly 'metaphysical' ones. This is the reason why the Categories' claims about substance are regularly and inevitably compared to the presumably most authoritative treatise on all questions concerning Aristotelian metaphysics, namely Aristotle's Metaphysics-even though this latter treatise is dedicated to an entirely different project. Far from the Categories' mostly classificatory interest (and far from, perhaps, merely contributing to the art of dialectic), the Metaphysics is meant to unfold Aristotle's most ambitious project of first philosophy, aiming at the identification of the first principles and causes of everything.

For Kant, Aristotle’s categories are arbitrary but brilliant and they don’t ultimately correspond to extramental reality. For Aquinas, however, they are rational divisions of extramental and real being. In this perennial and ongoing dispute the various positions seem to dissolve upon delving into the particulars of any one category. If, however, the categories are divisions of extra-mental being, it should be possible to offer plausible accounts of particular categories. I offer Aquinas’s unstudied derivation of the particular category quality as a test case to see how one could hold, and how Aquinas did hold, to a realism about Aristotle’s categories at a highly specific level. Although Aristotle divides quality into four species and some further subspecies, unlike Aquinas, he offers no reasons for these divisions. For Aquinas each accident is a particular mode of existing, i.e., it is a particular way that an accident exists in a substance. In the case of quality, this mode of existing follows substantial form and its real extramental causes or effects further divide it into four species. Aquinas’s account is both compelling and original, inspired by Aristotle but also un-Aristotelian. The paper concludes by comparing Aquinas’s account of quality with the best extant account of Aristotle’s quality, namely, Paul Studtmann’s.

The Chalcedonians favored the idea that the preservation of the differences in Christ is proof of the possibility of seeing two natures in Christ after the union. In contrast to this, the anti-Chalcedonians held the union must discard the difference for otherwise division between the natures of Christ will set in. The paper brings forth one less known, yet highly refined anti-Chalcedonian interpretation of the differentia that is accredited to the philosopher and theologian John Philoponus (c. 490-570s AD). I will show that by interpreting differentia per se as being part of substance, and by reasoning in agreement with Aristotle’s rules for essential predication, Philoponus obtains the anti-Chalcedonian result that after the union of the two natures in Christ their difference is only conceptual. In order to reveal the metaphysical assumptions of this approach, it will be finally contrasted with Maximus the Confessor's Chalcedonian alternative to it.

The present contribution pursues a twofold objective: The first part (I), which is mainly meant to lay out some rather introductory remarks, strives to give a general account of the context in which Ibn Sīnā’s hitherto neglected Middle Compendium of Logic (al-Muḫtaṣar al-awsaṭ fī l-manṭiq) must have been composed (I.1 and I.2) and to indicate, on a more specific level, in which way the Kitāb al-Maqūlāt of the Muḫtaṣar provides us with interesting material for assessing Ibn Sīnā’s reception of the exegetical tradition of the Categories (I.3); it is concluded by some notes on the two most reliable manuscripts containing the Muḫtaṣar (I.4) and on the editorial conventions that are subsequently observed (I.5). On the basis of two manuscripts from Istanbul, the second part (II) offers, at least to my knowledge, the editio princeps of the Kitāb al-Maqūlāt (“Book of the Categories”), i.e. the second treatise, of the Muḫtaṣar al-awsaṭ fī l-manṭiq.

Die Untersuchung Rainer Thiels (Marburg), eine "leicht überarbeitete und erweiterte Fassung" der altertumswissenschaftlichen Habilitationsschrift von 1997, behandelt eine auch philosophisch fruchtbare Fragestellung. Denn im Medium der Diskussion der spätantiken Kommentare zur Kategorienschrift erörtert Thiel nach einer Bestimmung der Zielrichtung der Schrift die einzelnen philosophisch wichtigen Aspekte wie die Kategorie der Substanz und die Universalienproblematik (Kap. 2), Substanz und Akzidens (Kap. 3), die vier Typen von Kategorien in Cat. c. 2 (Kap. 4), zur Bedeutung von (ου) καθ' υποκειµενου in Cat. c. 2 (Kap. 5), Gattung, Art und Differenz nach Cat. c. 3 (Kap. 6), der Katgorien-Katalog im 4. Kapitel der Kategorienschrift (Kap. 7), Plotin und neuplatonischen Kategorienkommentare (Kap. 8), das Substanzkapitel (Cat. c. 5) in der Kommentartradition (Kap. 9) sowie schließlich Aristoteles und die Kommentare zu ‚Ort' und ‚Raum' (Kap. 10). Thiel möchte einerseits zeigen, daß die neuplatonische Kommentartradition einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Verständnis der aristotelischen Kategorienlehre leistet. Dabei ist es insbesondere von Belang, den Ort der Kategorienschrift "im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ontologie und Logik" im Werk des Aristoteles neu zu bestimmen. Thiel wendet sich mit seiner Untersuchung sodann gegen die primär entwicklungsgeschichtliche Perspektive, die in der Forschung noch vorherrsche; demgegenüber sei zu zeigen, daß in entscheidender Hinsicht eine sachliche Vereinbarkeit zwischen der Kategorienschrift sowie der Metaphysik (vor allem mit ζ-θ) besteht (S. 1). Zudem sieht Thiel ein weit weniger problematisches Verhältnis zwischen Plotins Auseinandersetzung mit den Kategorien und der Kommentierung der Schrift durch Porphyrius und die folgenden Neuplatoniker, als dies gemeinhin geschieht. Gegen die schon in der Antike spürbaren einseitigen Deutungen der Kategorienschrift weist Thiel mit Simplikios darauf hin, daß es drei hauptsächliche Mißdeutungen des Textes gebe, und Thiel parallelisiert diese antiken Fehlinterpretationen grob mit den entsprechenden Fehllektüren Trendelenburgs, Bonitz' und Apelts. Bei der Bestimmung der Zielrichtung der Schrift stellt sich nämlich die Frage, ob sich Aristoteles' Position als vorrangig sprachphilosophisch, ontologisch oder epistemologisch kennzeichnen läßt (S. 11). Thiels Untersuchung trifft sich in wesentlichen Punkten und in zentralen Fragen mit der wichtigen Arbeit von Walter E. Wehrle, die bisher in der philosophischen Diskussion nicht die verdiente Aufmerksamkeit erfahren hat. 1 Wehrle zeigt detailliert auf, was auch Thiel als Hypothese leitet und dann als positives Ergebnis seiner Arbeit festhält, daß man nämlich von einer Kohärenz innerhalb des Denkens von Aristoteles sprechen kann (S. 9). Thiel wie Wehrle leisten damit wertvolle Beiträge zu einer systematischen statt entwicklungsgeschichtlichen Deutung des Aristoteles, die geeignet scheint, auch das philosophische Potential dieses Werkes wieder stärker in das Gegenwartsdenken einfließen zu lassen. Instruktiv ist im Hinblick auf die Frage nach dem Skopos der Kategorienschrift sowie der Kohärenz des aristotelischen Denkens, wie Wehrle das Problem löst. Gegen die entwicklungstheoretischen Ansätze, die alle einen metaphysischen Charakter der Kategorien annehmen und daher einen Wandel im Substanzbegriff von der Kategorienschrift zu Metaphysics ζ-θ, möchte Wehrle zeigen, daß die Schrift keinen metaphysischen, sondern einen semantischen Charakter hat und deshalb Teil der Logik sei. Wehrle argumentiert, daß die metaphysische Fehldeutung der Kategorien auf mittelalterliche Kommentatoren zurückgehe, die Porphyrius und andere antike Kommentatoren falsch verstanden hätten. Wehrle kritisiert zudem, daß die aktuell vorhandene 1 Walter E. Wehrle, The Myth of Aristotle's Development and the Betrayal of Metaphysics, Lanham 2001. Leider war es Wehrle nicht vergönnt, die Arbeit noch selbst zum Druck zu geben, so daß sich einige editorische Unebenheiten und ergeben, die in einer 2. Auflage korrigiert werden sollten.

Boethus of Sidon (floruit I BC), pupil of Andronicus and his successor to the guide of  Peripatos, is counted among the first commentators of Aristotle. The only fragments which we have in our possession belong to his Commentary on Aristotle's Categories, that had a relevant influence over Porphyry's exegesis and, then, over all the philosophers, who commented the first treatise of the Organon (especially Simplicius).
This work deals with Boethus' reading of the first five chapters of Aristotle's Categories.
The first chapter is about the historical context, the method of Boethus' exegesis, the structure of his commentary and the question of the skopòs of Categories.
In the second one, I will consider his interpretation of homonyms and synonyms, especially in relation to Speusippus' and Stoics' opinions about them. Furthermore, it will be noted the relationship between words, concepts and objects.
The third concerns Boethus' theory of universals with a particular view about the inherence (being said of a subject and being in a subject); moreover it focuses Alexander's rejection of this view, giving us very important elements to enlighten the problem.
In the fourth and last chapter I will show Boethus' original theory of form and substance and his very interesting implications in the tradition of Aristotelianism and then I'll discuss Plotinus' criticism (Enn. VI, 1-3) about notion of substance treated in Categories.

Si, comme on le dit, Alexandre d'Aphrodise travaille à « systématiser » l'oeuvre d'Aristote (en un sens qui reste pour partie à déterminer), il est légitime de s'interroger sur la façon dont il conçoit les frontières entre les disciplines dans la cartographie aristotélicienne des savoirs. Dans le cas de la métaphysique, ce sont les relations avec deux types de discours qui méritent en priorité un examen : la physique et la logique. C'est à cette dernière que l'on souhaite s'intéresser ici. On voudrait plus précisément essayer d'éclairer le sens et la portée de trois passages du Commentaire à la Métaphysique, trois textes qui font explicitement se croiser logique et métaphysique.
Loin de brouiller leurs frontières, Alexandre paraît au contraire procéder à une distinction assez fine, qui s’efforce de conjuguer le double statut, de produit et d’outil, conféré à la logique. La logique pour Alexandre n’est toutefois ni une forme pure, ni un instrument doctrinalement neutre.

In this paper, I will be examining Aristotle's Categories and the theory of substance and predication developed therein, understood as a sustained argument against the primacy of the Platonic Forms. To follow through with this line of approach we will begin with an account of Aristotle's understanding of primary and secondary substances, as well as the reasons he gives for distinguishing between the two. With this complete, we will then be in a position to explain how the theory of predication and substance that Aristotle presents in the his Categories is indeed, at least in part, an attempt to undermine the excesses of Platonic metaphysics. We will then turn toward assessing the merit of Aristotle's arguments in order to determine their standing as a refutation of the Platonic position. Giving a definitive answer to this question will require an examination of the relation between substances and their properties (e.g., secondary substances, quality, quantity etc.), that is, whether or not the former can exist independently of the latter; as a proper understanding of this relation will prove to be the deciding factor with respect to determining the overall effectiveness of Aristotle's criticism of Plato. Finally, I will argue that the Inseparability Condition Aristotle places on primary substances and their features frees him of any commitment to the existence of "bare particulars", and that free of this charge his theory of substances constitutes a substantial advance over and refutation of Plato's theory of Forms.

The Role of so-called Postpredicaments in Cracovian Masters’ Teaching
of the 1st half of the 15th Century

The third part of Aristotle’s Categories, postpredicaments, is problematic for several reasons. The most important one is that it differs signifi cantly from the rest of that treatise in terms of its content which led to the rejection of its authenticity by some scholars. The others, however, tried to explain the main differences between the three parts of Categories by showing the mutual relationship between them. The Cracovian Arts Masters of the 1st half of the 15th century – Benedict Hesse, Paul of Pyskowice and the anonymous author of the commentary
on Categories preserved in codex BJ 1941 – belong to the second group of interpreters who opt for the treatise’s authenticity. This article presents an overview of the controversies concerning the structure of Aristotle’s treatise, the way the Cracovian Masters of Arts understood them and tried to deal with them. Those attempts to prove the unity and the well thought-out structure of Categories as well as the necessity of the postpredicaments show the variety of methodological and doctrinal positions current in the Cracovian milieu that was characteristic of the philosophical approach of the Polish commentators of those times.

Gregory of Nyssa at the outset of his 'Against Eunomius' cites Eunomius, where the latter speaks about " greater and lesser " activities. However, discussing this quotation later in the treatise, Gregory misinterprets the words of Eunomius. He reads Eunomius as if he applied the principle of 'the more and the less' not to activities but to substances. Such interpretation cannot be proved on the basis of what Eunomius actually wrote. Actually, the two opponents (Gregory of Nyssa and Eunomius) used the same Aris-totelian position, which prohibits the application of the principle of 'the more and the less' to the category of substance. This position was used by the two polemists in order to argue against each other. At the same time, Gregory developed his own philosophical system founded on the principle of 'the more and the less' in the course of this polemics with Eunomius.

This paper offers an interpretation of Anselm of Canterbury’s semantic doctrines in De Grammatico, paying special attention to five distinctions present in the dialogue: dicitur in eo quod quale/dicitur in eo quod quid, esse ut in subiecto/esse non ut in subiecto, significare/appellare, significare ut unum/significare non ut unum and significare per se/significare per aliud. It elucidates the theoretical role of these distinctions, showing that they are introduced with different purposes and that conflation between them must be avoided. Three specific features of this interpretation are the following: (i) an analysis of the distinction between significare and appellare in relation to the orders of intellection and predication, (ii) an account of the difference between predication in eo quod quid/in eo quod quale and essential and accidental predication, and (iii) an analysis of the thesis that ‘grammaticus’ not only signifies per se qualitas, but also per se habere.

Il pensiero umano si attua, fondamentalmente, attraverso immagini mentali, stati mentali prelinguistici e linguaggio interiore. La mente appare a se stessa come un flusso di immagini, stati mentali ed enunciati interni incorporato in un punto di vista.
Fundamentally, human thought is realized through mental images, prelinguistic mental states and inner language. The mind appears to itself as a stream of images, mental states and internal statements embedded in a point of view.

A categorical ontology is a general classification scheme arising from the analysis of the relation of ontological predication. In the last decades, Lowe proposed a specific ontological square which combines the distinction between universals and particulars, based on a relation of essential predication, and the distinction between attributes and substrates, based on a relation of attributive predication. In this paper I briefly contrast Lowe’s square with the classical Aristotelian square and argue that the framework proposed by Aristotle allows us to develop a better interpretation of the fundamental entities and relations that constitute the square.

Suhrawardī’s discussion on the categories covers almost all aspects of Peripatetic doctrine including the deduction method for attaining the final list of the categories as well as the catalog of the categories and their characteristics. In this presentation, I shall discuss Suhrawardī’s critical point of view against the Aristotelian catalogue of the categories. For this purpose, I shall introduce Suhrawardī’s own reductionist division, as well as his main critiques, which results in a fivefold list exactly similar to Plotinus’ list of the categories in Ennead VI, especially VI.3. Suhrawardī’s criticism of Aristotelian theory of substance and accidents results in a rejection of hylomorphism and denial of substantiality of forms. This critique may betray a set of evidences for a case of Plotinus’ Ennead VI.1-3 reception in the 12th century philosophy in the Islamic world, and thereby further evidences for a fuller translation of Plotinus’ Enneads in Arabic.

Event: 15th Annual Conference for the International Society of Neoplatonic Studies (ISNS 2017)
Organization: Palacký University Olomouc & Centre for Renaissance Texts (CRT)
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc
Location: Olomouc, Czech Republic
Event Date: June 14-17, 2017