The Categories in General

Book Third — Classification of Being

Chapter I — The Supreme Classes of Being

Article 1. The Categories in General

This Book studies the most general classifications of real finite being, namely substance and accident. The classification called accident is ninefold, and the nine accidents together with substance constitute the ten categories or the ten predicamentals. The categories are not ten kinds of being, but real modes in which created being may exist; they are the supreme genera of being, or the supreme classes of real and finite being. The present Book studies these genera or classes, and then takes up the closely related subject of the causes of being. The Book has, therefore, two Chapters, as follows:

This Chapter studies the most general classifications, the supreme genera, of real and finite being. We do not here discuss logical being, nor dp we directly discuss that Infinite and Necessary Being which is boundlessly more perfect than the most perfect finite substance, and which is not subject to the qualifying limitations of the accidents. We study real and finite being. The supreme classification of real finite being marks it off into ten categories, or predicamentals, or predicaments, which we call “substance and the nine accidents.” These are the ultimate classifications of reality in so far as it falls within the immediate experience of a human being, that is, of finite reality, whether spiritual or material, whether existing or existible, whether existible in itself or existible as the mark, mode, qualification, or characteristic of something other than itself. In a word, we have in the categories modes of real being that are intelligible to the human mind. These are not modes of mind, or modes of thought, or modes of predication (such modes, as we have seen, are the Predicates’). They are modes of real being, and yet these modes bear a relation to the mind and constitute man’s catalogue, or his series of real pigeonholes, in which he files his experiences of reality. The Chapter is divided into three Articles, as follows:

c) Aristotle’s Categories

a) Need of Categories

The philosopher is a man who tries to penetrate as deeply as can be done into the nature of things. He seeks knowledge that is more than surface knowledge; he seeks knowledge that is root-deep, and indeed he seeks the very last and deepest roots. He wants the answer to ultimate hows, whys, wherefores. And he seeks to draw this knowledge from every available source, and to bring it into order and unity in his mind. Therefore, his is no random quest, no dilettante skipping here and there, no vagrant journey. Manifestly, if his search is to be fruitful, if it is to realize its most serious aim, the philosopher must have a clear-cut and objectively true map and plan. Of course, there must have been, in ages past, pioneers who had first to investigate before making up the map. But maps are checked and rechecked as time goes by, and presently they are known to be adequate and reliable. We do not take a map on faith alone, but because it checks with experience, because it indicates the way of a complete and rounded journey, and because it works out as a satisfactory guide. Now, something of the service of the true map to the traveller, is rendered to the philosopher by the categories.

All things come together in the concept of being or thing. But there must be some classes of real being, immediately discernible within the all-inclusive classification of being itself, which will enable the philosopher to begin his work, to get started on his journey with some promise of success. And these classes of real being must square with fact. It will not do to sit down and plan what we shall choose to regard as the ultimate classifications of real finite being. Hegel (1770-1831) made this mistake; he tried to analyze the concept or idea of being to learn the ultimate classifications of reality. One might as well try to map a territory by analyzing the abstract concepts of distance and direction. Manifestly, the classifications of reality, whether proximate or ultimate, depend upon human experience, upon human knowledge, upon human contact with the universe of realities. Man must classify reality according to what he has, by direct experience, come to know of reality. Hence, the true categories, or ultimate classifications of real finite being, must not be a priori postulates; they must be the fruit of experience.

The categories, born of experience and study, and found true by constant check with continued experience, enable the philosopher to be orderly and systematic in his efforts, and successful in his achievement. Without categories, no philosophy of reality would be possible; without the true categories, the adequate and true philosophy of reality is impossible. Hence the need of the categories.

b) Basis of the Categories

The basis of the categories is reality as it is experienced by human beings. The categories therefore are modes of being, not modes of thinking. True, the categories serve to make thinking successful, they direct it, they align its results, they unify its findings. But in themselves the categories, despite a necessary relation to mind, are classes of things and not of mental processes. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) gave to the categories the character of mental grooves or molds through which the “molten metal” of sense-experience is poured to take its final shape. Thus Kant made man’s mind the ultimate determinant of reality, a mill which turns out ingots of knowledge. Thus, incidentally, Kant destroyed the trans-subjective value of all human knowledge. Now, the true categories are not mental forms imposed by the mind on the world of experienced reality; they are classes of real things that may be experienced by knowing man. The true categories are not merely put into reality; they are found there; they are not imposed by the mind, but discovered or disclosed by the mind investigating reality and studying its own experiences with reality.

Further, the categories are based upon a changeless relation which they bear to a consistent and identical human mentality. The mind of man is of the same nature in all human beings of all times. It comes to grips with the same world of reality which waits to be experierDM and understood. Deny this, and you sweep away the possibility of true knowledge altogether; you lapse at once into the self-contradiction of utter skepticism. Now, if the human mind can have truth about this world with which it has direct experience, it must have changelessly true concepts of things which are really there. We know that there is a continuous process of physical change going on in the individual things that make up the universe, but this does not touch our contention. Individual things change; truth about things does not change. Individual things change; but their change involves no change in the essential kind of thing they were before change affected their fundamental being. Once, for example, I know what an apple is, my knowledge is not changed by the fact that an individual apple is eaten or rots away. The objective essence which I know as a circle is not destroyed because a circular hoop is bent into ovular form. The individual hoop has, indeed, ceased to be circular, but the essence circle is not thereby destroyed, so that all men must henceforth understand a circle as something ovular, and all the geometry books burned up as fallacious in their doctrine on the circle. Essences are, in this sense, eternal, changeless; necessary, indivisible. Therefore, the fact of physical change in the bodily universe (whether this change be substantial or accidental) does not alter the fact that the human mind (which is the same in alb men of all times) comes to the study oEMngeless reality, and deals with immutable objects or essences that are changeless. Hence, once the true categories are discovered and listed, tested and certainly known, their service is not subject to change, or to limitations imposed by times, fashions, or special interests.

The true categories, then, are based upon reality as experienced by the unvarying human mind which deals with eternal essences. Lacking the basis of these categories, any proposed classification of reality can but lead the mind astray in its quest for ordered knowledge. The history of thought furnishes us with many a calamitous futility turned out as philosophy (that is, as a fundamental interpretation of reality and a guide to human thinking) by men whose categories were misconceived and misconstructed. Such, for instance, is idealism which limits human knowledge to an awareness of one’s own states of mind and denies reality altogether. Such is phenomenalism which denies the existence of real substances and makes the world a series of apparent facts and events. Such is monism which was born of an oversimplification of the categories, and which makes the universe a single substance, variously manifested in what we consider distinct realities. Truly, we require the true categories if we are to have true philosophy. And the true categories must be based upon reality as experienced by the unchanging rational nature of man.

c) Aristotle’s Categories

Aristotle (384-422 b. c.) took into account not only the abstract concept of being, but the real trans-subjective world as it lies available to the effort of human knowing. He taught that the categories of reality must be discovered by the careful investigation of what man can know about reality. Both the mind and the reality subject to the mind’s quest for knowledge must be brought under consideration. What can the mind know about real things? That is the fundamental question.

It is the part of Criteriology, the philosophy of knowledge, to show what the mind can know, and how far and how certainly it can know things. The point we make here is that to have a valid list of categories, neither mind nor knowable reality is to be denied. We do not invade the field of Criteriology; we do not here present a philosophy of knowledge, truth, certitude. But we take the basic truths of Criteriology as demonstrated, and proceed to a detailed list of the things that the mind seeks to know in reality.

When we investigate the points about real being that the mind seeks to know, and can know, we find ten distinct questions which indicate the mind’s quest:

1. what?

2. how much?

3. what sort?

4. in what relations?

5. what doing?

6. what enduring?

7. where?

8. when?

9. in what attitude?

io. in what external condition?

The answers to the ten questions indicate the categories of Aristotle. There is no finite reality that is not, directly or indirectly, referable to one or the other of these ten. Two thousand years and more of close investigation, of a check-up endlessly repeated, have not brought to light any reality that is not to be listed in any one of these categories. Even Infinite Reality and logical reality are analogously referred to them, although they are strictly classes of finite reality. Surely, we are justified in accepting these categories as true, even as we are justified in accepting a tried and tested map.

To name and illustrate the ten categories of Aristotle, let us suppose a situation in which we contemplate a definite real being and put the ten questions listed above. We shall suppose that there is a man standing on a street-corner, talking with his employer, at three o’clock on an autumn afternoon. Keep the picture in mind as the following lists are studied and compared:

QUESTIONS NAME OF CATEGORY ILLUSTRATED

CATEGORY IN EXAMPLE

I. What is the being Substance A man

or reality?

2. How much? (how Quantity six feet tall; weighs

big or little?) 200

3. What sort? Quality white; American; in

dustrious; Catholic,

Republican, etc. 4. In what relations? Relation employee

5. What doing? Action talking

6. What enduring or Passion fatigue ? irritation ?

undergoing ? satisfaction ?

7. Where (is the real- Place street-corner, town,

ity) ? county, etc.

8. When (is the reality Time 3 p. m.; autumn; after

so placed, so act noon; etc.

ing, so enduring,

etc.) ?

9. In what attitude? Posture standing

10. In what external Habit fully clothed; in work

condition? (state, ing clothes; in busi

dress, etc.) ness suit; with

overcoat on; etc.

Here, then, are the categories: Substance and the Nine Accidents. Or, to repeat the categories in full: Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Action, Passion, Place, Time, Posture, Habit. We here append a very brief explanation:

I. Substance is a reality (bodily or spiritual) which is suited to exist itself, and not as the mark, modification, characteristic, or qualifier of something other than itself. Examples of substance: body, soul, spirit, hill, tree, fire, water. Substance is, in general, contrasted with the accidents. And each accident is a reality which is regularly unsuited for existence itself or by itself, but is fitted to be the mark, modification, characteristic, or qualifier of something else. The something else will always be, proximately or ultimately, a substance. A substance takes its name from the Latin sub-stans “standing under”; a finite substance is regularly marked and modified by accidents and it stands under them, supports them in being; and the accidents are said to inhere in the substance which they affect. Here we see why God is not properly to be called a substance; for God is not marked or qualified by accidents; He does not stand under any modification of qualification (for such things are limitations). But the true perfection of substance does not lie in the fact that it can support accidents in being, but in the fact that it can exist itself or by itself. Viewed in this way, the term substance is applicable to God. Indeed, God is the super-substance, for He not only exists Himself, but He exists of Himself, necessarily, causelessly. However, the literal meaning of the term substance limits it to the order of finite reality; indeed, all the categories are classifications of real finite being.

2. Quantity is the spatial extension of bodily substance. When we say a thing is big or little we express a quality rather than quantity; quantity is more definite; it indicates, in terms of measurement, how big or little, how much. When we say a tree is forty feet high, or that a man weighs about 200 pounds, or that a rug is “nine by twelve,” we indicate quantities.

3. Quality is, of all accidents, the most inclusive; it is the widest accident in scope of meaning and application. It indicates what sort or kind a thing is. Most adjectives are expressive of qualities. A list of the more important qualities may be arranged as follows: (cr) Dispositions and habits: prudence, for example, studiousness, rashness, credulity, are qualities of mind or will. Fatness, leanness, healthiness, robustness, are qualities of body. (b) Capacities: sensibility, keen-sightedness, responsiveness of thought or imagination, are examples of quality as capacity, (c) Passive characteristics: color, complexion, age, temperature, etc., are qualities of this type. Temperature and age can also be quantities when they are presented in more or less definite terms of measurement or degree, (d) Outlines or figures: roundness, angularity, straightness, curved-ness, are qualities of this type.

4. Relation is the order, the standing, the habitude, of one thing towards another. Examples of relation are found in equality, identity, paternity, servitude. Notice that relation is not a simple accident, but involves two things at least (and sometimes more than two) and exists between (or among) them.

5. Action is the producing of an effect. That which acts regularly produces modification or change; it affects something even as it effects its own result. Action is indicated in terms such as talking, walking, hitting, wounding, thinking, whistling, attending.

6. Passion is the receiving or enduring or undergoing of change. It indicates a being as affected, and thus it is the correlative and complement of action. Passion is indicated in terms like being hit, being wounded, being impelled. Transitive verbs regularly express action in their active voice, and passion in their passive voice.

7. Place is position of a body in space, with reference to other bodies; it is expressed in terms such as, here at home, down town, in that corner, on the ground, out west.

F. Time is the position of a body or of an event with reference to what precedes and what follows. It is indicated by such expressions as, at nine o’clock; after school; to-day; last year; before noon; in 1492.

p. Posture indicates the relative position of parts of the same body. It is expressed in such terms as, standing, sitting, lying down, lolling about, huddled up, outstretched, sprawling.

10. Habit indicates external adjuncts of a body. It is expressed in terms such as, well-dressed, in full armor, moss-covered, ivy-clad. The term habit as a special accident is always expressive of material and external things. A mental habit or an intrinsic bodily habit is something quite different from this “predicamental habit”; as we have seen, a mental or bodily habit is a quality.

Strictly speaking, a substance is a being, and has being. An accident is a modification of a being, and has in-being. An accident is said to inhere in the substance which it (directly or indirectly) qualifies or modifies or marks. An accident may qualify a substance directly (as motion or movement qualifies a flying bullet), or indirectly (as speed or direction qualifies the movement of the bullet, and, through the movement, qualifies the bullet itself). Thus there is such a thing as “the accident of an accident” (e. g., velocity of motion), but not in any absolute sense; there is always a substance at the bottom of the accidents, no matter how these are massed and intertwined, and the substance is needed to give reality to all the accidents concerned. It is not manifestly impossible for certain accidents to exist without a substance in which to inhere. Such accidents would be absolute accidents, that is, accidents which really confer a new entity upon the substance which they affect (such as quantity, or heat), and not merely modal accidents, that is, accidents which indicate the degree, or manner of presence, of an entity (such as straightness of a line, of degree of heat, or velocity of motion). In the order of nature, however, even absolute accidents do not occur without a substance in which to inhere. The point we make is that there exists no intrinsic or metaphysical impossibility of absolute accidents existing without a substance; the concept of such a thing is not self-contradictory. And, indeed, by divine faith we know that such a thing is not only possible, but is an actual fact. When bread and wine are substantially changed into the Body and Blood of Christ (transubstantiation), the accidents of the bread and wine remain. These do not become the accidents of the substance of Christ; they remain the accidents of the bread and wine; that is, they remain the existing accidents of a substance which is no longer there to support them in being. It is the common doctrine of theologians that the absolute accident of quantity endures after the substance of the bread and the wine has been changed, and that the other accidents of the sacred species (shape, size, color, taste, etc.) inhere in this quantity. This, however, is not a matter of philosophy, but of theology; it is mentioned here merely in passing, for the fuller information of the Catholic student.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have studied the meaning of the categories, and the need or necessity which they serve. We have found that the true categories must be based on no abstract analysis of being considered in itself, but must be grounded upon actual reality which lies within human experience, and upon the unchanging nature of man’s rational nature which inevitably tends to interpret reality and so to obtain an orderly and a deep understanding of the universe. We have named and explained the categories of Aristotle which alone, of all such classifications of finite reality, meet the requirements of reason, and which have endured the unceasing test of more than two thousand years. All finite reality is reducible, directly or indirectly, to one or other of these modes of real being or supreme classes of being. Even Infinite Being and logical being are, by analogy, reducible to the categories.