The Categories and the Analysis of Virtue (and Vice)

by Dr. Jan Garrett

This page revised 9/29/2010

Aristotle's Ten Categories (with examples)

Substance

Relation

Quality

Quantity

Place

Time

Action

"Passion"

Having*

Being in a Position*

This human, Socrates

Teacher of

Baldness, wisdom

5'2" tall

in Athens

in 399 B.C.

Speaking

Being addressed

has shoes on

is sitting

There are ten categories but some are more important than others. Aristotle does not do much with the asterisked categories. Among the categories, substance is the most basic. Without individual substances, items in the other categories would not exist; that is, there would not be qualities, quantities, places, times, etc.

Key words have different meanings if they apply to items in different categories. Good, which applies to things in at least four categories, does not always have the same definition. (This challenges Plato's notion that there is just one thing, the Form of Goodness, that we are trying to refer to when we speak of goodness.)

Substance		Quality		Quantity		Time
A good human being		A good quality, e.g., virtue, wisdom		The good (right) amount, e.g., of confidence		The good (right) time, e.g., to do something

 

Some concepts are the same only by way of analogy. That is true of Aristotle's concept of potency across the categories of substance and quality (and across the sub-categories of bodily quality and quality of soul). The concept of potency in the category of substance ("matter") stands to the concept of first act in the category of substance ("form") as the concept of potency in the sub-category of soul (capacity for a "state") stands to the concept of first act in the same sub-category ("state"). (The principle is like that in mathematical proportion: A/B = A'/B')

This is important for learning. Suppose we do not understand the relationship between body and soul, or the nature of moral virtue, but we do understand the relationship between the capacity to acquire physical strength and being physically strong. Reasoning by analogy we can come to grasp Aristotle's theory of the virtue and his theory of the soul.

Levels of Description		Quality of Body		Quality of Soul		Substance
Second Act		Using one's physical strength, e.g., lifting 100 # weight		Using one's virtue or, expressing one's vice, acting or reasoning excellently or badly		Characteristic soul activities
First Act		Possessing physical strength		Soul "state" or "habit" possessing virtues or vices		Soul
Potency		Capacity to acquire physical strength		Capacity to acquire virtues and vices		Body consisting of organs

We can discover connections between the analogous aspects. So, just as physical strength is produced out of the capacity for physical strength by appropriate physical movements (exercise), so moral virtue can be produced out of the capacity for moral virtue by practicing the appropriate moral actions.

Aristotle's account of how the soul is put into receptive matter is more controversial. He thinks that the physical contribution of the male parent works up potencies supplied by the female parent somewhat as a potter shapes the clay, with the difference, of course, that when the male contribution is finished with its work, there is an embryo, which contains an internal cause of its own future development. (The parents have no awareness of exactly how this is taking place, since it occurs out of sight.)