Categories in Aristotle and in Kant

Abstract

§ 438. If our reasoning is correct, the universalities of the various species of a genus are not particulars of the universality of the genus but kinds (or parts) of it. Suppose now an abstraction beginning from individual things till we come to so-called summa genera, or, as they would be more correctly termed, summae species. The universalities of all other universals would be comprised in the universalities of these, not as their particulars but as kinds, forms, parts, or aspects of them. If, then, we considered these summae species as kinds which Being or Reality must take, where Being is more accurately the Being of Things (that is, the universal of which Things are the particulars), the Being of Things is in the position of genus to these summae species and their several universalities are all comprised in the universality of this genus. In regard to this we must avoid the fallacy of creating a universal of universalities, with an infinite regress. That fallacy has been already sufficiently exposed. There is no universal of universalityness of which the universalities of universals would be particulars, for the universality of one genus universal as distinguished from that of another lies not in its being a unity which is particularized but in being particularized in these precise individuals, in being the particularization of its own peculiar quality or characteristic; but this is precisely itself, and its universality is indistinguishable from itself in the fullness of its being. Thus the classification of universalities can only be, if possible at all, the classification of universals; there is no universal of universalityness of which the universalities of universals would be particulars.