From The Archives 5: The Categories and their Possible Reduction

With this post, we have officially moved past my first year of college and we're now into year two! Classical Philosophy was the first philosophy class I'd ever taken, and as someone who's loved Greece ever since I discovered Greek Mythology (and Percy Jackson) in the 5th grade, I was very excited to learn about the philosophies of the ancient civilization. Doug Langston was a longtime professor of New College who retired before I graduated, so I'm glad I was able to take a few classes with him before he left!

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November 2016

            For Aristotle, all things can be put into 10 Categories. Those Categories include substance, quality, quantity, relation, time, place, affection, action, position, and state. It is possible that these Categories can be considered as the language to use for discussing all things, or as the actual existence of each item or concept, and Aristotle himself doesn’t ever determine which perspective is the one he is using to make these Categories. Whether or not the Categories are the language or the existence of things, there are several different ways the Categories can be reduced. 

            While the Categories could be argued to be of language or of existence/objects, I think it is a mix of both, focused largely on language. The act of categorization itself is a construct of language, placing things into categories that only matter in words and don’t actually make a difference in their real existence, but descriptive of their existence. One way of considering the Categories is in “the 5 Ws.” There’s multiple names for it, but it stands for Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. You can start substituting Ws and Categories for each other- Who and What would both be substances, Where is place, When is time, and then you’re left with Why and How. Why doesn’t work well for the purpose of substituting Categories, but it does work well for describing philosophy, because the search for knowledge and growth of philosophical thought is a result of asking and answering Why. I will now discuss the other categories and how they fit in.

            Of action and affection, Aristotle says that “both admit of contraries and also of variation of degree” and describe them together without saying much to if they differ (Categories, Part 9). He also mentions position in comparison, being the opposing non-doing to action’s doing and affection’s causing. While sitting may be different that walking or pushing, I’d argue that all three of them are a form of action and could easily be one category. In terms of language, words used for position, action, and affection are all forms of verbs. To sleep and to run are considerably different things, because to sleep doesn’t seem to be like you’re actually doing anything. But just because something doesn’t take much effort doesn’t mean that it is not a verb, or an action. Doing sleep and doing running are both things that happen and don’t just perpetually exist during all time. So, in terms of existence, they are all a form of doing, even the events considered under position.

            If one were to decide that position couldn’t fall under the same Category as action and affection, it could certainly be combined with state. State is a similar version of “non-doing” or seemingly effortless acts of doing. State is a way of being because of something that happened to it. Aristotle uses the example of “armed.” You can be armed with a sword and so then you exist with the sword and don’t necessarily need to do anything to create an action. However, an action still had to take place to cause the way of being to exist. To arm is also a verb, and so to be armed, it is still revolving around a verb and an action that happened in order for the state to be as it is. Therefore, state, position, action, and affection could all be joined together to make one Category, or split into two: doing the action, or being in the existence of having the action done in order to create that specific existence. All and all though, all four of these Categories fulfill How, and so it makes most sense to include them all together.

            That leaves us with quality, quantity, and relation. None of them fit easily within this current framework, so they could be either left separate, causing there to be then seven categories. Or, you could include them with substance because they’re all aspects of substances, leaving us with the four potential Categories of substance, time, place, and action. With as much time as Aristotle spent on them however, it is better to consider each in turn and decide as to whether it fulfills being a Category or not. 

            Relation is arguably the most controversial of the Categories outside of Substance. Relatives are, by their definition, the relationship something has in terms of something else. Aristotle begins with two examples for relatives: double, and superior. While these are both descriptors in relation to something, double could be placed as an aspect of quantity, and superior as an aspect of quality. In fact, the pairing of superior and quality is so common that hearing or reading the phrase “superior quality” instantly brings to mind the millions of advertisements that use the phrase to sell their product. He then used correlatives, knowledge and perception as things that exist within relation. Aristotle explains that in order for someone to be a slave, they must have a master. If the slave stops being a slave, then the master is also not a master any more, and vice versa. Their titles exist only within the existence of their relation. The problem becomes that the existence or end of existence of the title and relation does not cause the actual thing to stop existing. Relation in this way deals with secondary substances rather than primary substances, begging the question to its importance and whether it’s enough to be a Category.

            Correlatives like that of the slave and the master would presumably begin and end their existences in sync. The relation between objects and knowledge would not follow in the same way. An object can exist and be unknown, but knowledge of an object cannot exist without the object already existing. Therefore, the object and knowledge of the object do not have simultaneous existence, and neither does an object of perception and the perception of it. They do not immediately cancel each other out, and they do relate to primary substances, which were the previous problems. While they both need to exist in order to be a relation, the relation is not dependent on secondary substances, legitimizing the existence of the Category of relation. With the perception to not just relate between substances, but to also relate between substances and action, I would say that relation is not just an aspect contained within substance, but complicated enough to merit its own Category, setting us currently at 5 Categories with quality and quantity left to decipher.

            Quality consists of descriptors like blue or round. Qualities obviously relate to substances as their identifying features. To become a quality, whatever aspect or action must be repeated enough to become a disposition, then habit, then virtue of the thing. Substances can change and not necessarily retain a given set of qualities for the entire existence of the substance. Quality revolves so closely within substance that it could be contained within substance, and the philosophy of qualities can be examined just as well through the context of being a part of a Category as it could as a separate Category. 

            While substances have the room to change and be of different qualities while still fulfilling their Category of substance, quantity is different dimension of substance. Quantities are not just features of substances, but changes in how many exist. Not only are there units of different substances, but also there are quantities of units for measuring substances and parts of substances. Numbers and units of measurement exist not only more substances but as their own thing, and substances need not be counted in order for counting to happen. The dimension of quantity is so unique and vast, that particularly with the concept of infinity, quantity can easily stand alone as its own Category, leaving us with a total of 6. 

            Of course, all of this could be disregarded and one could look specifically at substance and how Aristotle mentions substance in terms of everything else. You could then decide that all the supposed Categories are just aspects of substances and how they move, relate, and otherwise exist in the world. Aristotle’s Categories would then become more like a book on substances, because having one category does not create a categorization for all things. Is substance too important of a Category, though? Should it not have its own book, seeing as all of the Categories relate in some way to substances and exist within the framework of substances that this world is made of? While not giving a title of substance to a book, Aristotle does consider the existence of substances in a great deal of his writing. If using an array of categories to explore the wider existence of substances is then agreed upon, should all 10 Categories be left, seeing as that all 10 categories do differ despite the many similarities between some? As it is, I believe that substance, quantity, relation, time, place, and action provide a solid group of Categories to explore the existence of all things both as substances and also within the network of the universe of existing things.