Demystifying the Aristotle Categories
Posted on 07 Sep 2025; 01:00 AM IST. Last Updated 07 Sep 2025; 01:00 AM IST.Summary: This article attempts to provide key insights into Aristotle Categories.
Aristotle defined ten categories to classify all things (entities), known in existence. These categories are defined as:
Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Situation(Position), Condition(State), Action, Passion.
It is very difficult to appreciate in a first reading, why Aristotle chose these properties. Immanuel Kant reportedly believed that these categories were chosen, without any underlying principle.
Before diving into the discussion on Aristotle Categories, it is useful to note, that Aristotle lived between 400 to 300 BC, which is about the time Lord Buddha lived in Nepal. At that time, India (Bharat), was ruled by Mauryan Empire, and “Prakriti” was their official language. This incidentally implies, that the “Golden age” of Sanskrit has ended in India, and that again implies, that Panini the father of “Sanskrit Grammar” (not language), could have lived, at least a few thousand years ahead of Aristotle.
The ten categories of Aristotle can be divided into two groups:
Group-A: Substance, Quantity, Quality, Position, State.
Group-B: Relation, Place, Time, Action, Passion.
The categories of first group are related to existential philosophy also known as Ontology.
The categories of the second group are related to linguistics.
It may be noted that in ancient times, linguistics was tightly interwoven with philosophy, and they lived together, as a single body of knowledge.
Much of the difficulty, in appreciating Aristotle’s categories is largely due to multiple inheritance, arising from different streams of knowledge. By separating these streams, we can arrive at a much cleaner picture of what Aristotle intended to tell or convey.
Aristotle uses the terms “Said-of Present-In”, and “Not Said-of Present-In”, to indicate universals or particulars.
The term “Present-In” implies that the categories are somehow present in the entity, and this proved to be a factor for perennial confusion.
Aristotle gave the naïve example “Socrates is white”; and further drew a conclusion which meant, whiteness exists in Socrates. This sounds good, but the theory cannot be generalized, to all cases.
Group-A categories
The first three categories of Group-A, namely Substance, Quantity, Quality, may be accepted without much difficulty.
Position or Orientation is a very relative term, and varies with point of reference. Hence, the existence of position or orientation in an entity, is meaningless or absurd. Position or Orientation is at best a dynamically acquired characteristic.
State may not be present “as is” in an entity, but most often it is a derived expression from state variables.
For example, we cannot directly measure, if we are healthy of have a disease. We could measure body temperature and then derive a conclusion from it, on the existence of a fever/disease.
There are odd cases, where state of an entity may be attributed to external factors.
Consider an object such as a chair.
The functional states of a chair are “Normal” (in good shape and fit for use), and “broken”(not fit for use). These states may exist, within the Chair object itself.
The domain states of a chair are “occupied”, “unoccupied”, and “reserved”.
When a chair remains unoccupied say in a movie theatre, we cannot claim or use it, because it may have been reserved.
The physical chair does not reveal who reserved it, and it is possible, that no one reserved the chair.
In the modern era of internet reservations, even the “Movie Theatre” owner has no clue, who sold what, so even they cannot tell, if a chair is reserved or were to stay vacant.
It should be obvious that the state of the object “chair”, was controlled by external factors (like the existence of a movie ticket).
Group-B categories
The most stumbling part of Aristotle categories is the “relative”, and it is extremely difficult to grasp, what Aristotle is really trying to convey.
Those who studied case grammars of linguistics or have a familiarity with Latin, Sanskrit and derived languages, could recognize that Aristotle was referring to case-5 (ablative), and case-6 (possession) of Sanskrit.
Place and Time are thematic roles in linguistics, and need little explanation.
The presence of “list of actions” as category, could bring ample cheer, and some confusion.
Aristotle has a notion called “Schematic”, which implies a generalization of an entity like Ontology. List of all actions, make wonderful sense, in a schematic or generalization of an entity. If we are dealing with a particular entity, then we could end up in some confusion.
For example, say the entity is a “Bank Account”;
We cannot delete a Bank Account, if the account is “active”. To really delete a Bank Account, the account should be in the “closed” state.
In general, what actions we could perform are determined by the state of the entity and other categories. Milner developed an entire calculus, called “Milner calculus”, using this principle.
Finally, we reach the last of the ten categories, which is translated to English from Greek as “passion” or “experience”.
It is the opinion of the author of this article (who does not understand Greek language), that the last category was probably meant to be “effect of action”.
An entity such as an ounce of gold bar, can be transformed into a bracelet. In this case, the entity “Gold Bar”, absorbed the effect of the action (whatever the goldsmith applied).
The most obvious questions are:
a) Do all entities absorb all effects?
b) Can effects stand on their own as independent byproducts?
c) Can effects, which are byproducts, react with other entities and produce newer products?
High school chemistry teaches us, all the above possibilities exist.
The following examples elucidate these possibilities, in a real world scenario.
Assume an investor bought a financial instrument called “Bond”, which yields 7% annual interest.
In this case, the quarterly interest (effect) stands by itself, and gets posted to the Savings account. The original Bond, does not absorb the effect (i.e. the interest).
Let us assume, the investor bought a “Fixed deposit (FD)” also known as “Certificate of Deposit (CD)”, then the quarterly interest may be accumulated with the principle, and become new principle amount.
In this case, the financial instrument (FD/CD) absorbed the effect (interest).
In either of the above cases, the interest (effect) could payoff a credit card debt (called EMI).
Beyond Aristotle Categories
Assume person has two pets like say a dog and a cat, and if that person likes cat more than the dog, then the “like” or preferred state, is not intrinsic to either cat or dog, but is intrinsic to the person(?). If the Person likes every cat over a dog, then the property can be assigned to the person as a category, else it is not even a defined category of the person.
Let us consider another example, where a company has two trucks named Truck-A, and Truck-B. Truck-A can carry a max of 5 tons, Truck-B can carry a max of half ton. The cost of transporting a ton of goods by Truck-A is cheaper than Truck-B. If the company now wants to transport half ton of goods, which truck will it use or select?
This example demonstrates that objects like trucks are categorized dynamically based on workloads, and the work load is extrinsic to the truck object.
As a third example, let us consider a satellite in orbit. It could be in tune or out of tune with base stations, depending upon its current position. The satellite could beam or send its position, and the base stations could then either tune or stay idle, if they receive a faint signal or no signal.
In this third example, the base station could be in two states (active or idle), but its state is not dependent upon anything that is intrinsic to itself. The state of the base station is tied into the strength of the signal received from the satellite.
As a fourth example, let us consider two chemical compounds, which do not react by themselves, but when a third compound (catalyst) is present, they react and produce a new product. The so-called intrinsic nature of compounds could undergo unspecified or unknown changes, merely due to the presence of the catalyst.
Remarks
Aristotle categories begins with the sentence -
“Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation(position), condition(state), action, passion”.
It is highly debatable whether the phrase “Expressions which are in no way composite”, imply that the Aristotle categories are single slot predicates? While it is possible to create higher level expressions from these naïve categories, such an effort would loose all the advantage, the conceptualization of the categories could achieve.
The author of the article believes, Aristotle was unaware of the modern day computing problem, wherein an entity may have to be selected from a pool of entities, with utmost precision. It may be noted that this task is like searching for a needle in a haystack.
It is plausible, that Aristotle may be trying to solve a problem of his era, wherein an entity may have to be differentiated from other entities. This task is like establishing a class symbol for an entity. To accomplish this task, Aristotle (probably) needed only a skeletal form of categories.