Aristotle’s Theory of Categories: Interpretation and Critique

Abstract

The theory of categories, one of the most important branches of ontology, is today in a state of great confusion. This fact may be traced back to the unfinished state in which the theory had been left by its founder, Aristotle. Subsequent philosophers felt called upon to improve it, but they were not his intellectual equals, nor were they actually aware of what he was getting at, and so even the valuable elements that Aristotle himself had contributed were lost sight of. Some wanted to find a theory of categories in Plato, to whom such a doctrine was totally alien. Leibniz imagined that he had improved the table of categories by reducing Aristotle’s ten predicaments to three — substance, absolute accident, and relation. Plotinus, too, long before Leibniz, wanted to reduce the number and proposed four: substance, inherent accident (that in which the substance is present), motion, and relation. Even in Plotinus’s time such an abridged version of the table was no novelty. Aristotle himself had considered classifying all non relative accidents under one category, but he realized that this would be to evade the very problem his classification was designed to solve.