The Ten Categories in Aristotle's Text and Thomas on Being Divided by Ways of Predication

Orientation #

He opens: “we are coming to the last part of the antepredicaments” — Aristotle enumerates the highest genera, names them and gives examples; then “let’s stop from the text of Aristotle and look at this text of Thomas.” He refers back to the antepredicament distinction of universal/singular substance and accident, and to “the word before, which is in the post predicaments” (prev. lecture). Handout p. 11, “Chapter Four of the Categories (The Ten Categories)”, is read for about 20 minutes; Thomas’s text is read from the same handout (“Thomas begins here… Lectio 5”). The previous class covered chs. 1 and 3 of the Categories; the next continues Thomas’s threefold division of predication.

The class, in order #

1. Aristotle’s names for the genera are concrete, not abstract (“using the concrete word, right”) #

Point: reading ch. 4 word by word, he insists the Greek names are concrete/denominative, and that this fits their being accidents — “something that exists in another.”

• “Of those things said according to no intertwining (symplokē), each signifies either substance (ousia) or poson.” Poson can’t be rendered by one English word: “how much or how many”; a friend (Marie, on the phone) says French combien covers both. The nearest English is size: size of a man or mountain (continuous) vs. size of a crowd or family — “my daughter’s got ten children, that’s a big size” (discrete). Latin quantus. Aristotle does not say “quantity”; the concrete word “gets more the character of an accident.”
• Poion — “how” [ed.: quality]. Pros ti — “toward something”; Albert the Great’s paraphrase (De praedicamentis) says ad aliquid, not the abstract “relation” — and “relationship” is “an abstraction of an abstraction.”
• Kasurik, his first undergraduate teacher, pointed out these concrete words; that “put me in good stead” reading John’s Gospel: “the word was toward God” — same pros. Persons of the Trinity distinguished by relations, but “very concrete”: the Son is toward the Father, the Father toward the Son.
• Pou and pote = Latin ubi, quando = where and when. “Especially dangerous” to translate them “place” and “time”: place and time are in the category of quantity; where and when are derived from them “by denomination, as he says in the first chapter.”
• The “notoriously bad” English translations: “an outline” for the list; “two cubits long”; “terms such as half, double, greater denote a relation” (“you lose that”); “certain phrases mean place … times intended by yesterday, last year” — “a mistake.” His paraphrase of Plato: until translators are philosophers or philosophers translators, bad translations. Some passages are turned “into the opposite meaning.”
• Keisthai — being positioned; echein — to have; poiein and paschein — Latin actio/passio; his English: acting upon and undergoing. Asides: Kasurik (“where’s your Greek?… you’re going to be a philosopher, you take Greek”), the wisest man at the College of St. Thomas, who said that compared to Aristotle “I’ve got the brain of an angleworm”; brother Richard arranged the meeting; Kasurik introduced him to De Koninck and Dion.

2. Why the Topics calls the first genus “what it is” (“instead of saying ousia… what it is”) #

Point: the Topics (“the book on places”) gives the same ten in the same order but names the first ti esti, and this reveals how the ten are distinguished.

1. Antepredicament distinction: universal/individual substance, universal/individual accident; everything else is said of or exists in individual substances.
2. So the highest genera can be distinguished by the way something is said of individual substances (Michael, Robert).
3. Some things are said of Michael by reason of what he is — man, animal, up to substance — hence ti esti. Added from wisdom: substance is definable in the proper sense; “definition” comes from limit, so nothing outside the thing should enter. But an accident must be defined through another: health = “the good condition of the body,” yet “is the body health? No.” So the other nine have definition “in a secondary sense.” Even his own “wisdom is the highest perfection of reason” defines by something other than wisdom.

3. The order of Aristotle’s examples (“show some order, right?”) #

Point (De Koninck): a modern philosopher’s examples show no order; Aristotle’s and Thomas’s do. Kasurik: “you can tell a man’s understanding by the examples he chooses.”

• Substance: man, then horse; not stone, not even tree. Man first because most known — “it’s your one substance”; lose an arm and “I’ve lost part of myself” (the Ronald Reagan film, “where’s the rest of me?”). Horse is closer to man; a stone you’re “not too sure is one thing”; a tree can be grafted, so lacks the same unity.
• How much: two cubits, three cubits.
• How: leukon (white, derivative of whiteness) then grammatikon — sensible bodily quality first, “more manifest,” then one in the soul; breadth rather than two from the body.
• Toward something: double, half, greater — “the most obvious examples … in quantity.”
• Where: in the Lyceum (his school, a private place) and in the agora (public). Aside: the Lyceum names the French lycée and a St. Paul movie theater; “the academic world” is named from Plato’s — “Aristotle’s school has declined.”
• When: yesterday (the clearer), last year.
• Positioned: lying, sitting. To have: shod, clothed (“discalced” — bare); logic books call it “habit.”
• Acting upon: to cut, to burn — Aristotle the son of a good doctor, known to the court of Macedon, teacher of Alexander (wrote a book on Homer for him). Undergoing: the reverse; his own example “kicking and being kicked” (Mozart kicked down the stairs by a nobleman).

4. Affirmation, truth and falsity; the three parts of the book (“neither true nor false”) #

Point: each of the ten by itself is said in no affirmation (kataphasis); by intertwining you get one, and every affirmation “seems to be either true or false.”

• To say what is is, or what is not is not: true (the negative too); what is is not, or what is not is: false. Without intertwining, neither: “man, white, runs, wins.”
• He calls the ten “the ten saids”; the names said of all ten the books call “transcendentals” — he calls them “the saids.” Those are equivocal by reason; but these genera are said univocally of what comes under them.
• Aside from Metaphysics XII: we must understand what a thing is and then compose or divide — “a certain motion”; God has no motion and, understanding what He is, understands everything at once.
• End of the first of three parts: the Latins’ antepredicamenta (these four chapters), predicamenta (ch. 5 on: mainly substance, quantity, quality, relation, “very briefly about the last six”), postpredicamenta — “we’ll talk about what they are when we get there.”

5. Where Thomas distinguishes the ten, and why wisdom is about being in general (“ten supreme accusations”) #

Point: Thomas has no commentary on the Categories; his two accounts of the ten are in Physics III and Metaphysics V.

• “Category” is from the courtroom: I accuse you of murder, adultery — to accuse is to say something of you. Warren Murray: “the ten supreme accusations.” The same Greek word appears in the Gospels when they accuse Christ. Latin praedicamenta; English “predicaments.”
• Physics III (“Natural Hearing”): Aristotle is treating what motion is and how it involves acting upon and undergoing, so Thomas explains those two categories and why motion is in quantity, quality and where.
• Metaphysics (“wisdom,” “first philosophy”), book V: wisdom is about causes, then the first cause; the first cause is the cause of all, so the science of the cause of all is about what is said of all. Example: the king moves everyone, the general only soldiers; every soldier is a citizen but not every citizen a soldier, so “citizen” is said of more. The names said of all are equivocal by reason, hence book V distinguishes their chief senses and order.

6. The two divisions of being as such; logic and natural philosophy for wisdom (“act and ability, most of all”) #

Point: being as such is divided either into the highest genera or into act and ability [ed.: act and potency], which is more universal — found in every genus, and God, in no genus, is pure act.

• Accidental being is understood through this: “Christian geometer,” “white geometer,” “geometrical grandfather” — not really one thing, since each is said of me.
• Book IX of wisdom on act and ability has three parts: ability with reference to motion; act generally (even form is act); their order — showing how tied it is to natural philosophy. No wisdom distinct from natural philosophy unless there are immaterial substances, reasoned to from motion (unmoved mover; the soul’s operation not in matter).
• Anecdote: on first meeting Msgr. Dion he asked whether natural philosophy isn’t more important for wisdom than logic. Dion’s answer: logic is like wisdom in being about the immaterial; natural philosophy goes from general to particular, “towards matter twice,” while wisdom goes toward the immaterial — so logic disposes for wisdom in a way natural philosophy does not. Modern physicists “so down into matter” tend to atheism, or polytheism “like Einstein.” Both are important: one division comes from logic (the figures of predication, distinguished by the way they’re said of something), the other from natural philosophy. At Laval De Koninck taught natural philosophy and some logic.

7. Thomas, Lectio 5: being is not divided into the ten as a genus into species (“non univoce”) #

Point: “Being is divided into the ten predicamenta not univocally, as a genus is divided into species.”

• Genus (their earlier definition): a name said with one meaning of many things other in kind, signifying what it is; with one meaning it says each kind only in general.
• Being is not said with the same meaning: “If you leave this room you will cease to be” — a threat; “Your Honor, I only meant cease to be in the room.” Take off your clothes and you cease to be — clothed, “a diminished sense.” Substance, being alive, being in the room.
• Common words (like “before”) are all equivocal — by reason, not by chance. The probable argument (asked whether he gave it last time): what is by chance is not always so; being is said of everything; a name equivocal by chance said of everything “doesn’t make any sense.” His three Richards (the Tuesday student, his brother, the package-store manager): by chance; if everyone were named Richard it “destroys the very purpose of naming.”
• De Koninck: “every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason.” Aristotle distinguishes the senses and their order; modern philosophers never do — “they don’t understand the words that they use” (Heraclitus: men don’t understand the things they meet every day). “The most common mistake in thinking is mixing up these words.” Even “substance,” apart from its function as a genus, has many meanings.

8. Why ten? (“I don’t know the reason, but I understand the reason”) #

• The joke: Aristotle had ten fingers. Metaphysics XII: the Platonists sometimes say numbers go on forever, sometimes that they go to ten and repeat (some truth); Near East peoples used six. The reason given: 1, 2, 3, then the first square, 4; 1+2+3+4 = 10 — though “no reason given” why stop at the first square.
• Aside: “substance” = stand under; Thomas’s Adoro te devote (“latens deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas”) has seven quatrains, 28 lines, the second perfect number; Bonaventure divides his treatment of grace 1+2+3+4 = ten chapters — “helps you remember it too.”

9. The ways of being are proportional to the ways of being said of (“a likeness of ratios”) #

Point: Thomas’s second sentence, and what “proportional” means.

• In wisdom Aristotle “leads you by the hand” from a lower science — from logic and from natural philosophy, “with the brevity of wisdom that Shakespeare talks about.” Thomas: the way of natural philosophy is by motion, of logic by predication. Nature is defined by motion, motion by act and ability; Shakespeare, “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.” One thing is said of another only in reason.
• Laval logic: Albert’s De praedicabilibus (genus, difference, species, property, accident) and De praedicamentis; the syllogism rests on said-of-all and said-of-none. Albert: first thing in logic is the universal; Boethius: “a thing is singular when sensed, universal when understood”; he prefers the name, something sensible, said of many. A name is said of many with different meanings or the same; different: unconnected (the Richards) or connected. Thomas divides into three: entirely the same, entirely different, “in the middle.” He told Dion that Porphyry’s Isagoge should have said these are said genetically [ed.: generically]; Dion agreed.
• Proportion (back to Euclid): a ratio is 2:3; a proportion is a likeness of ratios, 4:6 as 2:3, 2:3 as 200:300, as two trillion to … — supplying the fourth term shows you see the likeness. Carried to non-mathematical things: seeing is to the eye as hearing is to the ear. “This is very important.”
• The reason for the proportion: “when we say this of this other thing, we say this to be that” — whence the ten genera of being are called the ten predicamenta. How we know it: “we’ll see it as you go through this.”

10. “In three ways takes place all predication” (“all predication comes about”) #

Point: Thomas means every predication of individual substances, presupposing the antepredicament distinction, because everything else is said of or exists in individual substances — you and me, Habiba, Champion, Tabitha (his daughter’s cat). Champion: Gene Autry’s horse, seen as a boy in St. Paul, “the most intelligent horse I’ve ever seen” — his second example of substance.

• Usually the ten are divided into two, substance and nine accidents; Thomas divides into three. His rule: “two or three, or both.” Statement: noun (without time) and verb (with time), or subject, predicate, copula. Plot: beginning, middle, end (Homer taught the Greeks), or tying and untying knots. Family: parents and kids, or father, mother, kids — the litany of St. Joseph calls him “head of the holy family” despite Mary being queen of heaven; “the rule of prayer is the rule of faith.” Equivocal/univocal: division into two, then equivocal subdivided by chance/by reason — or Thomas’s three at once; Our Father petitions: good/bad, or end/means/impediments. Aristotle’s antepredicament fourfold crisscrosses two divisions, one of them substance/accident.
• Closing: the mind is first ignorant, then confused, then reaches distinction — “we might need more than one distinction.” The three ways themselves are not reached this class. Aside: Trump and Hillary signs on the way to church (“why are you advertising your stupidity?”).

His words #

• symplokē; “intertwining” — statements as opposed to things said simply
• poson; “how much or how many”; his English “size” [ed.: quantity]
• poion; “how” [ed.: quality]
• pros ti / ad aliquid; “toward something” [ed.: relation]
• pou, pote / ubi, quando; “where, when” — not “place, time”
• keisthai; “being positioned”; echein; “to have” (logic books: “habit”)
• poiein, paschein / actio, passio; “acting upon and undergoing” [ed.: action, passion]
• ti esti; “what it is” — the Topics’ name for substance
• kataphasis; affirmation
• “the ten saids” — the categories; “the saids” — names said of all ten [ed.: transcendentals]
• category; from the courtroom, accusation; “the ten supreme accusations” (Warren Murray)
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics]; “wisdom” / “first philosophy” [ed.: Metaphysics]; “the book on places” [ed.: Topics]
• “act and ability” [ed.: act and potency]
• genus; a name said with one meaning of many things other in kind, signifying what it is
• equivocal by chance vs. by reason
• proportion; a likeness of ratios (Euclid), as opposed to ratio
• “rule of two or three, or both”

Texts #

Read in class:

• Aristotle, Categories, ch. 4 (handout p. 11, “The Ten Categories”)
• Thomas Aquinas, Lectio 5 on Physics III (as he states; from the handout): “Being is divided into the ten predicamenta non univoce…”; “the modes of being are proportional to the modes of being said of”; “in three ways takes place all predication” Mentioned:
• Aristotle, Topics — same ten, first called ti esti
• Thomas, commentary on Metaphysics V (the other text distinguishing the ten)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII (God’s knowledge; Platonists on number), IX (act and ability, three parts)
• John’s Gospel prologue (“the word was toward God”); the Gospels’ accusations of Christ
• Albert the Great, De praedicamentis, De praedicabilibus; Porphyry, Isagoge; Boethius
• Aristotle, Poetics (plot); Thomas, Adoro te devote; Bonaventure on grace; litany of St. Joseph

His questions #

• Why does he give man as the first example of a substance, then horse? Man is most known, “your one substance”; horse is closer to man than tree or stone, which lack the same unity.
• Why is it dangerous to translate pou and pote as place and time? Place and time are in the category of quantity; where and when are derived from them by denomination.
• The word definition comes from what? Limit — so nothing outside the thing should enter; accidents are defined through another, so their definition is secondary.
• Why should a knowledge of the first cause be about being in general? The first cause is the cause of all, so its science is about what is said of all (king/citizen vs. general/soldier).
• Why is being not equivocal by chance? What is by chance is not always so; being is said of everything; the three Richards.
• What is a proportion? Is it a ratio? No — a likeness of ratios; supplying the fourth term shows you see it.
• Why ten? 1+2+3+4, four being the first square — “I don’t know the reason, but I understand the reason.”
• What are the three ways all predication comes about? Left open — the class ends before Thomas’s three are given.