Relatives in Aristotle's Categories : Research for a Discriminating Criterion

RELATIVES IN ARISTOTLE'S CATEGORIES : RESEARCH FOR A DISCRIMINATING CRITERION

In the treatise of Categories, after enumerating the ten categories in Chapter IV, Aristotle undertakes to examine each of the principle four in a separate Chapter. On the first reading, it seems difficult to understand Aristotle's goal in this detailed study. The unity of the inquiry is not really evident: Aristotle tests certain criteria (contrariety, a more and a less, simultaneity) for each category. Nevertheless, when we more closely compare the structure and the results of Chapters V, VI, VII, and VIII, we can put forward an idea of Aristotle's aim and propose an interpretation in which he would look for determining a distinctive character (idion) of all items that belong to one and the same category and of them only.

Indeed, Chapters V and VI both end in the same way: Aristotle concludes with what is most distinctive of substance and quantity, respectively being "numerically one and the same [and being] able to receive contraries" (4b17) and "being called both equal and unequal" (6a35). To the contrary, at the end of Chapter VII, instead of the statement of relatives' distinctive character that we would expect there, we are faced with a puzzled and perplexed conclusion that we can understand as a confession of failure. Aristotle refuses to make a peremptory (sphodrÐ"Ò's) ruling on the questions that touch relatives without having reexamined them. Thus, he does not offer what is the most distinctive of relatives. In this regard, the category appears as an exception, although Chapter VIII represents a return to the normal case, except that the determination of quality's idion ("being called similar and dissimilar" 11a18-19) does not close the Chapter. Aristotle continues with a discussion of the way in which certain things seem to fall at the same time into the category of relatives and into that of quality. According to Caujolle-Zaslawsky , it is precisely because Aristotle does not identify what is the most distinctive of relatives that he does not master this category and see it extending beyond quality. We shall study this point in our third section. Nonetheless, for three of the four categories that are examined in detail, Aristotle determines what is their distinctive character, and for two of them, closes with that. And as a confession of perplexity concludes Chapter VII, we can see here a clue towards the hypothesis that in these Chapters, Aristotle does aim to determine an idion that would permit the discrimination of all items included in a category and of them only.

Since, for relatives, Aristotle's undertaking ends with a confession of failure, this paper proposes to clarify what relatives are by examining the obstacles that stand in the way of determining a distinctive character. We shall wonder why Aristotle is not satisfied with any tested criterion. And insofar as we do not have relatives' idion, we shall look for something that permits one to identify relatives anyway despite their tendency to extend beyond other categories. In this regard, we shall also discuss the problem of overlapping.

1. First difficulty : The immediate diversity of relatives

a. The plural designation of the category

The first obstacle encountered in the investigation of what is properly distinctive of relatives is the heterogeneousness of items falling into this category, which straightaway appears much less unified than the other ones. First, the way Aristotle names the category of relatives (ta pros ti) contrasts with the general designations of substance (hÐ"Є ousia), quantity (to poson) and quality (hÐ"Є poiotÐ"Єs or to poion). Indeed, although other categories are designated by a singular substantive, Ð''ta pros ti' is in the plural and corresponds to the substantivization of a prepositional syntagm. To this prepositional character, we can compare the use, as substantives too, of Ð''to poson'and Ð''to poion' which usually serve as interrogatives and indefinite adjectives. Because they are indefinite and general, their usage does not affect the unity of the categories of quantity and quality. On the contrary, Ð''pros ti', even in its singular form, Ð''to pros ti', does not unify all the things that are said to be relatives to something else as Ð''poson' and Ð''poion' do with all items which answer to the questions Ð''how many/much?' and Ð''how?'. This results both from the diversity of syntactical constructions that express a relation, a diversity which is indicated by Aristotle in his definition of relatives , and from the multiple types of beings that can be called relatives, a multiplicity that we can see reflected by the indetermination of tis.

Concerning the plural character of Ð''ta pros ti', we have to differentiate it from the sporadic use of Ð''substances' , Ð''quantities' and Ð''qualities' in the plural, for it is obvious that, in those cases, Aristotle means items which fall into the category and not the category itself. On the other hand, in Chapter VII, when he considers the category of relatives itself, he generally talks about Ð''the in-relation-to', in the plural and prepositional form ta pros ti, that is to say not about the category of relation, not even of relative in the singular, but of relatives. The nuance seems important because if Aristotle had wanted to use a generic and abstract noun (such as Ð''ousia' or Ð''poiotÐ"Єs'), it is not the Greek language that would have prevented him. He could have employed the noun Ð''anaphora', like he does in the Chapter VI about the Ð''large' or Ð''small' as being relative . Aristotle could have also talked about Ð''schesis', which has been done by Ancient commentators such as Simplicius. Or, if he really wanted to employ a prepositional syntagm to underline the proximity between the expression and the being of relatives as Caujolle-Zaslawsky suggests , he could have employed the singular Ð''to pros ti'. Yet none of these possibilities actually occurs, and one can think it is deliberately that Aristotle prefers to name the category of relatives by the plural and not generic term Ð''ta pros ti' rather than by Ð''anaphora', Ð''schesis' or Ð''to pros ti'.

How can one interpret this preference? According to Caujolle-Zaslawsky,