Aristotle’s Categories are ten and deal with the nature of a proposition. They can identify the subject and predicate, with substance being the most complex. The categories include quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and passion. Each part of a proposition falls into one category.
Aristotle’s Categories are taken from a section of his work on logic, Organon, entitled Categories. The works of Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, were extremely influential on the development of Western philosophy and science for centuries after his lifetime. Aristotle’s Categories deal with the nature of a given part of a proposition, a statement that can be proven true or false. Therefore, Aristotle’s Categories are an integral part of the study of Aristotelian logic.
Aristotle’s Categories are ten and can be used to identify both the subject and the predicate of a proposition. The predicate is that which can be proved true or false about the subject. In the sentence “All men are mortal,” for example, “All men” is the subject and “are mortal” is the predicate.
The first of Aristotle’s Categories is Substance. This is both the most complex and the most controversial of the Categories. Simply put, substance is that which exists in and of itself. All other categories say something about substance, but substance itself can stand alone. Some modern philosophies reject this definition of substance.
The second of Aristotle’s Categories is Quantity. This refers to the physical size of something and is the basis for much later mathematical thinking. Almost all concepts that are physical in nature and measurable in numbers would fall into the category of quantities, such as descriptions of height, weight, and width.
Aristotle’s third category is Quality. This describes the intrinsic nature of an object. Quality also includes physical descriptions, but only those that cannot be described mathematically.
The fourth of Aristotle’s Categories is Relation, which describes how one object relates to another. The relation of one thing to another can be that of cause and effect, or that of equivalence, for example. Things can also be related physically, like one is smaller than the other, or temporally, like one is before the other.
Aristotle’s fifth category is Place. This refers to the object’s physical position in the environment or its location. The sixth is Time, i.e. the temporal position of the object, both in relation to certain events and in relation to any timing system.
The seventh of Aristotle’s Categories is Position. This specifically refers to the position of the different parts of the object in relation to each other and may be better understood by some as ‘pose’ or ‘posture’. The eighth was State. This is a continuous but not intrinsic attribute of the object. While an adjective like “carefree” may fall under the quality category, one like “asleep” would be classified as status.
Aristotle’s ninth category is Action, referring to how changes to one object affect something else. Conversely, the tenth category is Passion or Affection, concerning changes that something else has on the object.
Every part of a testable statement, or proposition, falls into one, and only one, of these categories, according to Aristotle. Here is an example sentence with the relevant categories in parentheses: The shy (quality), eight-foot (quantity) girl (substance) reclined (location) next to her sister (relationship) in her backyard (location) that afternoon ( time), happy (affection) with the strawberries she ate (action), but bored (state).
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