Categories

Categories are hard to describe, and even harder to define. This is in part a consequence of their complicated history,
and in part because category theory must grapple with vexed questions concerning the relation between linguistic or
conceptual categories on the one hand, and objective reality on the other. In the mid-fourth century BC,Aristotle
initiates discussion of categories as a central enterprise of philosophy. In the Categories he presents an
 scheme which classifies all being into ten ultimate types, but in the Topics introduces the categories as
different kinds of predication, that is, of items such as  or  of a tennis  or , which can be
  subjects. He nowhere attempts either to justify what he includes in his list of categories or to establish
its completeness, and relies throughout on the unargued conviction that language faithfully represents the most basic
features of reality. In the twentieth century, a test for category membership was recommended by Ryle, that of
absurdity: concepts or expressions differ in logical type when their combination produces sentences which are
palpable nonsense.Kant, working in the eighteenth century, derives his categories from a consideration of aspects of
judgments, hoping in this manner to ensure that his scheme will consist exclusively of a priori concepts which might
constitute an objective world. The Sinologist Graham argues that the categories familiar in the West mirror
Indo-European linguistic structure, and that an experimental Chinese scheme exhibits suggestively different
properties, but his relativism is highly contentious.

1 Categories in Aristotle
Despite the historical importance of category theory in Western philosophy, it is remarkably difficult to grasp what a
category is and how a category theory might achieve legitimacy. To a degree, such elusiveness is simply the product
of the lengthy and elaborate historical development these theories have sustained, but the profundity of the issues they
broach also contributes to the puzzle - and hence to the abiding interest - of categories.
Orthodoxy has it that Aristotle in the treatise appropriately entitled Categories introduces categories to the Western
tradition:  of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a
relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being-affected (1b 25-7). Despite what his
phrasing might easily be (and often has been) taken to imply, Aristotle plainly intends to refer, not to linguistic items,
but rather to their referents. Thus his sentence might be paraphrased  things to which we can refer in uncombined
(namely syntactically simple) language, each is.., and it enumerates all the types of being there are: substances,
such as human beings; quantities, such as three feet long; qualities, such as red; and so forth. But although his manner
of expression is in one sense misleading, it should not be deplored or dismissed as merely something like a trivial
confusion of material and formal modes of speech. Rather, here, as so often elsewhere, Aristotle is moving from what
we would regard as features of language to features of the world without so much as signalling any recognition that
there is a transition to be made. Nor does he explain how he arrived at his list, or why one should feel confident that it
is comprehensive (see Aristotle §7).
To complicate matters further, there are compelling grounds for the belief that, despite the tradition, the genera of
being with which the Categories deals are not (Aristotelian) categories. The word which we transliterate  is
employed by Aristotle to mean  or (type of) , so that a   ought to be a theory of
predication, not of being. And in a relatively unfamiliar text, Topics (I 9), this is just what we do find. After saying that
the types of predication must be distinguished, Aristotle provides a list identical to that in the Categories - except that
the first item is not , but  it  (103b 21-3). In the Categories, individuals such as Socrates are
substances pre-eminently, and species such as human being are substances secondarily: in the Topics, in contrast,
colour is the  it  of red no less than human being is the  it  of Socrates.
What the Topics delivers, then, is a theory of predication according to which the predicates which can characterize any
subject whatsoever will fall into ten ultimate kinds. Again, defence of this list in particular (or of the possibility of
constructing any non-arbitrary, correct list) is lacking; but reflection on why the Topics was written might make the
absence of this defence considerably less shocking, though at the cost, ironically enough, of undermining the status

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)
 which the categories of the Categories have historically enjoyed. The Topics as a whole comprises prescriptions for
the classification and analysis of a vast array of the sorts of argument then current in Greek philosophy. The intention
is combative as well as constructive: Aristotle also teaches how to detect and dismember what he considers sorts of
fallacious reasoning, and prime among these is ignorant or malicious exploitation of confusion in manner of
predication. For example, what is good about food? That it does something - it produces pleasure. What is good about
human beings? That they are  a certain quality, such as temperate or courageous or  (Topics I 15.107A). So, if
viewed as a digest of types of predication already familiar from the practices of Greek dialectic, the categories of the
Topics require no defence beyond reasonable fidelity to the range of predicates actually found in the typical dialectical
repertoire. In particular, there need be no presumption that predicational categories rooted in philosophical practice
will correspond to a significant, let alone universal, ontological classification.
This is not to say that predicational and ontological categories are unrelated. Because Aristotle moves with
disconcerting freedom from language to the world, he takes it for granted that predicate expressions do usually,
without the possibility of radical misrepresentation, refer to real entities. So a scheme of predicational categories might
indeed suggest at least the outline of a corresponding ontological scheme, one justified in detail and scope precisely to
the extent that the original classification of predicates, and its extension, are well-founded. If this is the correct account
of how these theories developed in Aristotle, what prompted the substitution of ontological  for
predicational  it ? Perhaps the governing idea of the Categories is that substance alone can serve as the subject
in which items from other categories inhere: for instance, Socrates, but not his height, is pale-skinned and can properly
be said to be pale-skinned. Therefore the design of the treatise is to convince us that, at its deepest level, ontology is
marked by a crucial asymmetry between substantial and non-substantial being, quite possibly in a spirit hostile to the
elevation of Platonic Forms which, far from being most real, would figure as no more than non-substantial, parasitic
things. If so, a further irony is that the Categories was intended to establish a metaphysical thesis essentially
independent of the grand classificatory ambitions with which it came to be historically associated. In the event, the
philosophical tradition which was dominated by the followers of Aristotle since late antiquity, elevated the ontological
categories into a system uniquely capable of displaying the lineaments of what is (see Being §2; Substance).

2 Categories in Ryle
The most noteworthy modern contribution to the theory of categories is that of Gilbert Ryle, in that he tries to throw
light on the difficulty which Aristotle left entirely obscure: how to identify and discriminate between categories (see
Ryle, G. §2). Ryle contends that one determines the logical category or type of an expression by ascertaining the field
of sentence-forms into which it can enter without resultant absurdity. For example,  can complete the frame
..is a prime  to yield a meaningful (if false) sentence, while , or so Ryle would urge, cannot. Such
nonsense exemplifies what Ryle famously dubbed the -, the production of absurdity as the upshot
not of lexical or grammatical irregularity but of the vain effort to combine the logically uncombinable. He conceived
of category theory as a diagnostic tool for the exposure and resolution of chronic philosophical disputes. Ryle
proposed that disputants on either side of, say, the mind-body problem are really at cross-purposes: they have put
forward propositions which only seem to conflict, since their difference in type removes the possibility of any logical
relations, whether of implication or of incompatibility, holding between them. At one point Ryle was willing to go so
far as to proclaim that  philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines (1949: 10).
Although Ryle regarded  theory as the ancestor of his own, an obvious dissimilarity is that Rylean
categories, defined as they are by multiple logical relations, are potentially unlimited in number: Ryle was keen to
explore what he termed  logical geography of , not to engage in pigeonholing. The great awkwardness
looming over  theory is that all ventures to make out a principled difference between mere falsehood and the
nonsense allegedly distinctive of category-mistakes have come to grief. But if Ryle did not finally achieve a strict
criterion for the identification of categories, he nevertheless did successfully sharpen the powerful and once
widely-shared intuition that certain propositions - some of philosophical importance - must be rejected not as false, but
as (veiled) nonsense.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)
 3 Categories in Kant
The basic problem of specifying what a category theory is, is unavoidably aggravated by Kant, the second major
historical influence to shape the tradition (see Kant, I. §4). Kant arrives at his alternative categories by considering the
conditions which allow there to be a logic of judgments, a procedure which he explicitly attributes to Aristotle, while
emphasizing the divergence of their conclusions (Kant 1781/7: A80, B105). He asks: Which judgement forms does
logic treat of? His answer is that all judgements have a  (universal, particular or singular) and a 
(affirmative, negative or infinite). They must all instantiate one of the  (categorical, hypothetical or
disjunctive), and one of the  (problematic, assertoric or apodeictic) (Kant 1781/7: A70, B95). Kant
proposes to derive his categories from these forms or aspects of judgment, obtaining the corresponding list of unity,
plurality and totality under  reality, negation and limitation under  inherence and subsistence,
causality and dependence, and community under  and possibility-impossibility, existence-non-existence and
necessity-contingency under  (Kant 1781/7: A80, B106). He pretends that their derivation from the types of
judgement makes his categories superior to , because this procedure supposedly guarantees that all the
concepts of pure understanding, and no others, are systematically discovered.
Every element of empirical reality must fall into place within this scheme, since the categories exhaust the
 a priori concepts.  eventual aim in the Transcendental Deduction is to prove that, since every
experience involves judgement, every possible experience must involve use of the categories. Specifically, his claim is
that one must conceive of experience as experience of a world organized by the categories.
The conviction that Aristotelian genera of being and Kantian concepts of understanding cannot, pace Kant, be in
competition, is hard to avoid since the philosophical projects which gave a point to these various theories are so
diverse. But we should not hastily conclude that these schemes have nothing of philosophical importance in common.
 transitions from what we are likely to classify as linguistic or conceptual data to robustly realist theses
seem surprisingly bold, even unmotivated; but that is precisely because we are heirs to the Kantian legacy which
insists on our right to empirical realism but concedes the obligation to earn it by espousing transcendental idealism.
Aristotle blithely assumes that the fabric of the world is accessible to us, disclosed by the range of predications people,
at any rate those of a philosophical disposition, have been disposed to make; he mounts no argument for the reliable
accuracy of predication. True, it is not as if later Aristotelians ignored the issue of what the categories are categories
of. Because the Categories was incorporated into the Organon - which came to be the traditional logic course,
culminating in the analysis of arguments - some interpreters were indeed inclined to the position that the Categories,
which began the logic course, ought to deal with the simples from which propositions making up arguments are
constructed, and so favoured the identification of categories with words. Other strands in the tradition preferred a
realistic interpretation, while nevertheless asserting a thorough-going isomorphism between the structures of the
world, our concepts and the words in which we express ourselves (this  interpretation is vividly and
compendiously presented in, for example, the Renaissance Conimbricenses commentary on the Organon). Still, even
Aristotelians sensitive to the question  are categories categories of?, neglected the gulf which might separate our
conceptual and linguistic resources from what really is: such isomorphism is viable only if grounded in a pre-modern
assurance that an impersonal teleology or a divine providence secures and protects the fit between us and the world.
 transcendentalism attempts to redeem such hostages to scepticism. We might accordingly conceive of both
theories of categories as intimately concerned with the relation of language or our conceptual equipment to the world.
To the Kantian, Aristotle seems primitive because he  fails to perceive the paramount challenge confronting
philosophy; to the modern follower of Aristotle, the Kantian seems the decadent victim of unjustifiable doubts.

4 Are categories universal?

The impression that Aristotelian and Kantian theories have a vital disagreement in common is strengthened if we move
beyond the Western tradition in which they are such towering presences. Angus Graham (1989) endorses the
contention, most frequently linked with the name of the famous linguist Benveniste, that the Aristotelian categories

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)
 represent nothing more than yet another bogus reification of Indo-European linguistic forms. For example,
 in  list is the translation of a Greek word which functions as both an interrogative ( much?)
and an indefinite adjective ( ). Thus it is argued that peculiarities of Indo-European grammar have
encouraged the construction and success of a categorical scheme which, viewed from a broader linguistic perspective,
is nothing more than the deluded inflation of quite parochial traits of familiar languages into general features of reality
itself.
Graham goes on to try to substantiate this charge of Indo-European parochialism and to show that moderate versions
of   are acceptable - that is, that the narrowly linguistic properties of a language (its syntax, its
degree of inflection and so on) encourage or discourage certain thought-patterns in its users. He sketches a scheme of
Chinese categories derived from Chinese interrogative patterns, on the assumption that Aristotle had unreflectingly
extrapolated his from Greek ones. For example, if the Aristotelian category of substance is the natural linguistic
correlate of the question  is it?, the analogous Chinese interrogative ho solicits an answer in terms of lei, kind or
type of thing (for example, human) rather than essence or basic nature (for example, rational biped). His global
hypothesis is that the Chinese preference for ? over ? questions betrays a holistic cast of mind, felt
throughout Eastern philosophy, originating in the inevitable congruence of Chinese thought with Chinese language.
 version of linguistic relativism is arresting but very hard to vindicate. Quite apart from the obstacle that in
the Topics the category  it  groups non-substantial subjects as well as substances,  relativistic
interpretation presupposes that Aristotle proceeded in blinkered ignorance of the (alleged) fact that his native language
variously stimulated and inhibited his tendency to propound ontological doctrines. But inspection of his works amply
demonstrates that Aristotle is acutely aware of the linguistic traps into which philosophers are prone to fall. After all,
in large measure the goal of the Topics is to alert us to such dangerous possibilities, and  exercises in
linguistic analysis often reach a pitch of extreme sophistication. This is not to say that gauging the impact of language
on category theories is fruitless: only that they must not be reduced to a paltry imposition of fortuitous linguistic
structure onto a world actually untouched by such strictly local projections. Relativistic objections do not foreclose the
debate between Aristotelian confidence and Kantian caution.
See also: Ontology in Indian philosophy; Universals
ROBERT WARDY

References and further reading

Aristotle (4th century BC) Categories, trans. and notes J. Ackrill, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.(Discussed in §1
above.)
Aristotle (4th century BC) Topics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.(Discussed in §1 above.)
da Fonseca, P. (1606) In universam dialecticam, Coimbra.(Renaissance commentary on the Organon, written by
several authors of whom de Fonseca is the sole one known.)
Frede, M. (1987) The Title, Unity, and Authenticity of the Aristotelian Categories, in Essays in Ancient Philosophy,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.(Magisterial exposition of the account relating the Categories and Topics, adopted in §1
above.)
Graham, A.C. (1989) Disputers of the Tao, La Salle, IL: Open Court.(Appendix 2 is the source for the relativistic
arguments relayed in §4.)
Kant, I. (1781/7) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith, London: Macmillan, 1929. (Discussed in §3.)
Ryle, G. (1937-8) , Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, reprinted in A.G.N. Flew (ed.) Logic and
Language, 2nd series, Oxford: Blackwell, 1959.(Pithily brilliant classic introduction of the views outlined in §2.)
Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.(The most sustained and influential attempt to
do philosophy by uncovering category-mistakes.)
Reding, J.-P. (1986)  and Chinese , Philosophy East and West 36: 349-74. (Contains a thoughtful
critique of  relativism.)
Sommers, F. (1963)  and , Philosophical Review 72: 327-63.(One of a series of works in which
Sommers attempts to formalize and improve on criteria for types put forward by Ryle and others.)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)