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The Categories

Predicaments = Ten General Categories that can be Predicated of a Subject.

“Subject is P.”
What can P be?

Aristotle and his followers attempted to exhaustively find all possible predicates a subject can take on. There are, he thought, ten possibilities: nine different “accidents” with one “essence.” These ten categories describe a subject in some way.

In general, organizing our thoughts is part of traditional logic. It’s about defining and categorizing terms, forming judgements and propositions, and reasoning.

Terms can either be about an individual or can be a universal. Any individual term is usually a proper name (e.g., Socrates). It refers to a specific individual. A universal term (also called a general term) refers to many things of the same “likeness” (e.g., men). They share a common nature so that we can classify them together.

When we describe an individual we often must resort to universal terms. “Socrates is a man.” “Socrates is a philosopher.” “Socrates is old.” “Socrates is wise.” “Socrates is talking.”

Patterns emerge. This allows us to classify predicates. Frequently we predicate a quality. Being “wise” and “old” are qualities. Or we predicate activities like “talking” or “walking.” Alternatively, we might refer to the essence – i.e., what something is.

A Possible Short-Hand Description. . .

Predicables answer the question How?
That is, how is the subject being predicated?
Are we predicating it essentially or non-essentially?
Is the predication a species, genus, specific difference, property, or accident?

The Categories (or Predicaments) answer the question What?
That is, what is it about the subject that the predicate tells us?
Is it telling us its essence or is it an accident?
If it is an accident, what kind of accident?

Category	Basic Meaning	Simple Example
Essence	what the thing fundamentally is	Socrates is a man.
Quantity	how much, spatial extension	Socrates is 5′ 7″*.
Quality	what kind, what sort	Socrates is wise.
Relation	what it is like related to another	Socrates is taller than Plato.
Place	where is it	Socrates is in Athens.
Time	when is it	Socrates was born 470 BC.
Position	how it is situated	Socrates is sitting.
Habit	being equipped	Socrates is armed.
Action	activity, doing	Socrates is talking.
Passion	undergoing, being affected	Socrates is bruised.

The Ten Categories!
*(That height I totally made up – in case you’re wondering!)

Substances and Accidents

All simple examples above have Socrates as the subject.
He’s predicated ten different ways.

“Socrates” is a individual term. It refers to the person Socrates.

This subject — Socrates — is a substance.
A substance is a thing that exists in itself.
It is a “being-in-itself,” that is, it is what which exist in itself and not in another.

Socrates exists on his own as a unique individual apart from other things; he is one thing.

The category of essence refers to what kind of substance Socrates is. He is most fundamentally a man, a human being. The essence of the water near me to drink, e.g., is that it is H₂O. That’s what water fundamentally is.

The predicables, in part, help us organize how we can refer to an essence.

An accident is a “being-in-a-substance.”
That is, it is that which exists not in itself but only in another.

Socrates’s height is an accident. It doesn’t exist in itself, since it only exists as an attribute of the substance Socrates. In fact, all accidents depend on substances. Without a substance to be “in,” no accidents would exist. Accidents are not nothing, though. They are real determinants of a substance to be one way or another way.

Socrates, e.g., will have a certain height. This might make him tall or possibly short.

Aristotle and his followers defined nine categories of accident: quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, habit, action, and passion. These we can predicate of a substance.

Accident of Quantity

A being’s substantial nature is distinct from any of its quantitative features. Any particular zebra in the world is not identical to its mere height! Clearly, its quantitative dimensions depend upon the zebra’s existence as a real object that can be measured. It exists in an extended way (with height, width, and depth). This allows us to see the zebra.

Material objects are measurable because they have extension.
Extension allows for rough boundaries.
And those rough boundaries are often measurable.

Quantity cannot be underestimated, given its importance in physics!
Materiality brings quantity!
It makes it concrete, so to speak.

Quantity has two subdivisions: (1) Continuous and (2) Discrete

(1) Continuous quantity can refer to numbers that are infinitely divisible (e.g., the real numbers — since a third number can always be found between two real numbers). It also can refer to geometrical objects that are “unbroken” and have no “discontinuities” (e.g., lines and planes). Aristotle had the latter in mind.

Precise precision is impossible; but we can approximately measure height, for example, with a measuring rod that appears continuous.

(2) Discrete quantity refers to the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.). There is no natural number that’s between 1 and 2. How many eyes Plato has, e.g., will be answered with a discrete number.

Accident of Quality

In daily life we couldn’t identify a material object’s quantity without first recognizing some quality. I perceive quantitative features of a zebra because I first recognize it with certain colors, a certain shape, etc.

Things are far more complicated for a scientist designing experiments to infer the nature of atoms, no doubt, yet quantitative features still concern some qualitative being(s).

At any rate, quality has traditionally been subdivided four ways.

(1) Disposition / Habit
(2) Power / Capacity
(3) Sensibles
(4) Figure / Shape

(1) A disposition or habit is an attribute that can be developed by (some) substances. Socrates can become skillful at debate. He can acquire virtues or vices. (It’s possible to observe these things through Socrates’s actions.)

(2) Powers or capacities are attributes that are of ability. Man has the power to see. An eagle likewise has the power to see, though it is much stronger than man’s power. Matter in general has the power to “pull” by having the force of gravity, i.e., matter attracts matter.

(3) Sensibles deal with attributes of a substance that we can observe with one of our external senses (i.e., sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch). Scholastic terminology would call this a “proper sensible.” Seeing the red color of the flower, e.g., is limited to the eyes. And eyes have a limited scope: not only because they cannot detect things that other external senses can, but because only a narrow spectrum of light can be seen with them.

In modern philosophy, apropos, John Locke would call qualities like color, sound, taste, etc. “secondary qualities.”

(4) Figure or shape deals with attributes of a substance that we can observe with more than one of the external senses. Hence the Scholastic terminology: “common sensibles.” We can perceive the shape of something, e.g., by sight and touch. I can see and touch the figure of a tree.

John Locke would call features like this “primary qualities.”

Note, however, that the “common sensibles” aren’t limited to figure or shape. Motion, e.g., is a “common sensible” but is of the category of “action.”

Accidents of Relation, Place, Time, Position, and Habit

Another common way to predicate a substance is a relation. Something can be compared with something else. I’m related to my computer in the sense that I’m its owner and user. Some people are taller than me; some people are shorter than me. That can only be known through comparison, through a relation.

It’s been suggested that we can simplify the categories. Are not place, time, position, and habit all relations? Why not claim there are six categories, not ten? W. Norris Clarke suggests this in his book on metaphysics, The One and the Many (pp 134-5).

We have relation in general, and we have the next four traditional categories.

(1) Place refers to location. It answers the question of “where.” It’s a spatial relation. Socrates lived in Athens. The Capitol Building is in Washington, D.C.

(2) Time refers to a temporal relation. It answers the question of “when.”

(3) Position is about the relation of the parts to the whole. Socrates can be sitting “Indian style.” He can be standing straight. He can be genuflecting.

(4) Habit is to be “equipped” in some way. It’s a relation between something and its close environment. For example, the clothing somebody wears.

Accidents of Action and Passion

Substances engage in activities! Thus, it’s fitting to have a category of action. I’m typing on my keyboard. Socrates is running. Aristotle is debating. A bird is flying. Anything producing an effect is engaging in an action.

Philosophy subdivides action into transient action and immanent action.

A transient action of something produces an effect outside itself. I write on a paper with a pen. There’s an effect outside me; namely, markings on the paper.

An immanent action of something produces an effect inside itself. As I form an idea in my mind, this action stays within me.

Substances are also affected by other things. Thus, we have a category of passion. I hear music because the radio is on. I am cooling down because of the air conditioner. The water is solidifying because the air in the freezer is sufficiently cold.

Diagramming and Sorting the Categories!

**A Possible Diagram of the Categories (open to refinement**)!

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Additional Categories?

There are arguably additional categories.

W. Norris Clarke’s metaphysics textbook The One and the Many, which I have greatly profited from studying (and you will, too!), suggests that “system” is a category of predication not covered in the traditional list.

Individual members can be part of a system, and this system takes a life of its very own, so to speak, and which cannot simply be reduced to those members or their individual relations. A system produces a “new unity.”

Fr. Clarke is thinking about societies, churches, ecological systems, etc. Finite beings are invariably in relations with other beings. This helps produce a “togetherness.” Things reside in systems. The universe itself is a type of “togetherness.”

Substance, Primary Substance, and Secondary Substance

A Philosophical Detour on Essences & Substances

Perhaps I should note that specific individuals — as substances — are the primary things to predicate. Unless we adopt a Platonic philosophy, abstract objects don’t exist outside of the mind.

We don’t meet “humanity.”
We do meet “humanity” as it exists in Socrates, Plato, and so on.

“Humanity” — the species we call “men,” that falls under the genus of “animal,” with the specific difference of “rationality” — exists in the mind as a universal only because we can conceptually abstract this idea from Socrates, Plato, and so on. This power of abstraction to form ideas is called “simple apprehension.”

Human nature exists in each and every human being, but that concrete nature is not itself universal nor particular as such.

Primary Substance: exists independently from the mind and does so as a specific, individual being on its own independently and not in another.

Secondary Substance: is an idea of the essence of a primary substance.

The category of essence is thus a “secondary substance.”

To go to the usual example. . .
“Socrates is a man.”
— The subject here is a primary substance.
— The predicate here is a secondary substance.