Non-Substantial Individuals in Aristotle's Categories

Abstract

's Categories1 classifies entities by using two predication relations, being 'said of' a subject and being 'in' a subject.2 Four kinds of entity emerge from this classification: (i) things that are neither 'said of' nor 'in' a subject; (ii) things that are 'said of' a subject but not 'in' a subject; (iii) things that are both 'said of' a subject and 'in' a subject; and (iv) things that are 'in' a subject but not 'said of' a subject.3It is clear what sorts of entities belong in the first three of these classes: Socrates, man (the species), and colour (the species), respectively. But the nature of entities in the fourth class-that of non-substantial individuals-has been a matter of intense debate over the past few decades. The traditionally accepted view, which I shall call the 'traditional view', is that a non-substantial individual is a property that cannot be shared by (be 'in') more than one individual substance; thus, on this view, the individual white 'in' Socrates ã Mehmet M. Erginel 2004 I am grateful to David Sedley for his valuable suggestions, and to Alex Mourelatos for commenting on several drafts of this paper. I also wish to thank Ed Allaire, Matt Evans, Jim Hankinson, Iain Morrisson, and David Sosa for their comments.1 In this paper I mostly rely on, but occasionally di•er from, J. L. Ackrill's translation in Aristotle: Categories and De interpretatione [Categories], translation and notes (Oxford, 1963).2 I shall use the terms 'said of' and 'in' in quotation marks when they are meant in Aristotle's technical sense. Likewise, it is the technical sense of 'in' that is meant when I refer to the 'x is in y' relation.3 Aristotle's classification of entities into four kinds based on the two predication relations was the first formulation of a theory which has largely dominated the history of metaphysics; the four classes have been traditionally known as: (a) individual substances, (b) universal substances, (c) universal accidents, and (d) individual accidents, corresponding to (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) above, respectively. See I. Angelelli, 'Accidents, III: The Ontological Square', in H. Burkhardt and B. Smith (eds.),

Essentialism in the Categories

“…295-7 and 303-4;Hetherington 1984;Gill 1984, 10-14;M. Frede 1987a, 50-63;Devereux 1992, 114-126;Wedin 1993;Erginel 2004;and Corkum 2009, 5-15. 12 For discussion of this consensus and its proponents, see Crivelli 2017, 540-1.…”