Chapter 7: Categories

Homework:
A. Read Chapter 7.
B. Read these lecture notes.
C. Attend Class on Monday & Wednesday.
D. Do Exercises I and II in Chapter 7.
E. Take the quiz for Chapter 7.

This week, we are studying Aristotle’s 10 categories. As I mentioned last week, a

category is a series of universals ordered under a highest genus. Aristotle thought that
you could take any nature (cat, dog, tree, brother, uncle, square, triangle, science, etc.)
and place it into one of ten categories. He thought that doing so would help you to define
that nature.

Let’s look at the 10 categories and see some examples for each one:

I. Substance
II. Quantity
III. Quality
IV. Relation
V. Action
VI. Passivity
VII. Time
VIII. Place
IX. Posture
X. Habit

Many of these categories have sub-categories. You do not need to know the sub-
categories, but studying them does help too understand the categories themselves.

I. Substance
 Universal Substances: human being, dog, cat, tree, flower (These are the same as
the Universal Substances we studied as ante-predicaments in the last chapter.)
 Artificial Objects: statue, painting, desk, chair
 Parts of Substances: arm, branch, kidney, petal, leaf
 Collective Wholes: class, team, union, symphony, flock, gaggle (of geese)

II. Quantity
 Discrete Quantity: seven, four, twelve (These are simply numbers.)
 Continuous Quantity: line, surface, solid, area, volume (These are terms
signifying areas.)

III. Quality
  Capacities: intellect, sensation, locomotion (Remember that we discussed
capacities in Chapter 1) Also incapacities: blindness, deafness. Also qualities such
as hard and soft.
 Habits: science, art, health, virtue, learning a language (Habits are long term.
They really stick with you. Also dispositions: having a cold, having an opinion.
(Dispositions are short term).
 Immanent actions: thinking, seeing, pondering, being happy (These are actions
that remain within the person performing the action. They do not have an external
effect. If an action has an external effect, then that action goes in the fifth
category, which is Action.)
 Sense-qualities: colors, flavors, textures, odors, flavors.
 Shape and Form: triangle, square, rectangle, circle (Be careful with these. They
look like they belong I the category of substance, but they are actually qualities.
Qualities such as handsome, pretty, and beautiful are also qualities, because they
derive from the shape or form of something.

IV. Relation (These are terms that are referred to something else.)
 Examples: father, sister (Of course, a father or a sister is also a human being, but
if I say father or sister instead of human being, then I am trying to show a certain
relationship that person has to others.)
 More examples: half, double, triple, quadruple, greater, percentages (20%, 75%)
decimals (.5, .043), three-quarters or ¾ (Percentages, decimals, and fractions look
like numbers, but they are actually relations because they indicate a relation of
one number to another number: x is ¾ of y or m is 35% of n.)

V. Actions
 Examples: pushing, punching, throwing (These actions have an external effect.)

VI. Passivity (This is to be on the receiving end of an action, from the fifth category.)
 Examples: being-pushed, being-punched, being-thrown-to.

VII. Time
 Examples: today, yesterday, 11.35am, morning, noon, evening

VIII. Place
 Examples: in class, in your dorm room, at home, in Rochester, NY

IX. Posture
 Examples: standing, sitting, kneeling

X. Habit (This is dress or ornamentation)

 Examples: robed, clothed, bejeweled, armed

Do Exercise I in Chapter 7 and then check your answers against the answer key.
Terms that Cannot be Categorized
Not all terms can be placed into categorized. Indeed, only simple terms can be placed into
categories. What is a simple term?

A simple term is a term signifying a nature that is essentially one.

So, what are the terms that cannot be categorized? There are four of them:

1. Composite Terms: A composite term is a term that is accidentally one. Examples of

composite terms are “yellow leaf” and “tall human being” and “red wagon.” Let’s
contrast these with simple terms. An example of a simple term would be leaf. Leaf
belongs in the category of substance. But yellow leaf is a composite term. While a yellow
leaf is an individual thing, it is not essentially one, because in my mind (conceptually), I
can break apart yellow leaf into two separate universals: yellow and leaf. These
universals go into different categories: yellow goes in the category of quality and leaf
goes in the category of substance. So, yellow leaf is a composite term.

2. Singular Terms: These also cannot be placed into categories. Examples of singular
terms: Socrates, Donald Trump, and Rex the dog. I can place human being into a
category. The term human being is a substance. But a particular human being is always a
combination of many different qualities. For examples, Socrates is a human being, male,
old, wise, ugly, philosophical. All of these qualities would go into different categories.

3. Transcendental Terms: There are only three of them: good, thing, and true. You
should commit these to memory. They are transcendental because they apply to all the
categories.

4. Negative Terms: These also cannot be categorized, because they are inherently
ambiguous and so apply to many more categories than just one. Examples: non-human,
non-rectangular.

Now do Exercise II in Chapter 7. Check your answers against the answer key.

When you are ready, take the quiz for Chapter 7.