What is philosophy? How does it differ from science, religion, and other modes of human discourse? This course traces the origins of philosophy in the Western tradition in the thinkers of Ancient Greece. We begin with the Presocratic natural philosophers who were active in Ionia in the 6th century BCE and are also credited with being the first scientists. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximines made bold proposals about the ultimate constituents of reality, while Heraclitus insisted that there is an underlying order to the changing world. Parmenides of Elea formulated a powerful objection to all these proposals, while later Greek theorists (such as Anaxagoras and the atomist Democritus) attempted to answer that objection. In fifth-century Athens, Socrates insisted on the importance of the fundamental ethical question—“How shall I live?”—and his pupil, Plato, and Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, developed elaborate philosophical systems to explain the nature of reality, knowledge, and human happiness. After the death of Aristotle, in the Hellenistic period, Epicureans and Stoics developed and transformed that earlier tradition. We will study the major doctrines of all these thinkers. Part I will cover Plato and his predecessors. Part II will cover Aristotle and his successors.
Subjects and Predicates
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From the course by University of Pennsylvania
Ancient Philosophy: Aristotle and His Successors
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From the lesson
Aristotle’s Categories
Aristotle’s anti-Platonic metaphysics: the ultimate realities are ordinary objects of our experience, like people and animals. Each of these is a substances, the most fundamental type of being.
Meet the Instructors
Susan Sauvé MeyerProfessor
Department of Philosophy
[MUSIC]
Aristotle's work, The Categories, is about the kinds, or
categories, of things that there are.
In fact, our term category comes from this Aristotelian context.
However, the root from Aristotle's term kategoria
to our term category is somewhat indirect.
Since Aristotle does not use his term to mean a class or
a kind, but rather predication.
So let's see how we get from predications to kinds of beings.
Here are some examples of predications.
Socrates walks.
Diogenes is in the marketplace.
Whales are mammals.
Violets are blue.
We can think of predication in two different ways.
One of them is linguistic.
"Socrates walks" is a sentence in which the noun
Socrates is the subject, and the verb walks is the predicate.
In the sentences "whales are mammals", the noun whales is the subject,
and the noun mammals is the predicate.
Alternatively, we can think of predication,
not as a relation between words, but rather as an ontological matter.
That is, as a relationship between the beings, or
the entities, to which the words refer.
The Greek for beings, or entities, is onta,
thus, ontology studies what there is.
Predication as an ontological matter is a relationship between beings, between onta.
And that's the subject of Aristotle's categories.
So Aristotle thinks of predictions, kategoria, as an ontological matter.
The sentence, "Socrates walks" predicates one thing walking
of another thing, Socrates.
The sentence, "Diogenes is in the marketplace" predicates a certain
location, in the marketplace of another thing, Diogenes.
The sentence, "whales are mammals" predicates one thing, mammal,
of another thing, whale.
Now the linguistic and the ontological forms of predication are connected.
Any linguistic predication, that is a sentence with a grammatical subject and
a predicate, like Socrates is walking, invokes at least two beings.
The entity that is predicated, for example walking ,and
the entity that is the subject for that predicate, Socrates.
Now here the subject is not a grammatical subject, but
an ontological subject, since Socrates is a human being, not a word.
In fact our term subject comes fro the Latin translation
of the Greek term that Aristotle is using.
Hupokeimenon, which means more literally underlying thing.
So an ontological subject is an underlying thing.
In Aristotle's view, Socrates is the subject for walking.
This means that Socrates supports, or underlies,
the walking that is predicated of him.
But, what does that mean?
Okay, think about Socrates walking and
now separate those two things, Socrates and walking, in your mind.
Now Socrates is easy enough to think about and easily conceived of as not walking.
He could stop and sit down for chat with Euthyphro, for example.
He does not need to be walking.
Now what about that other thing, his walking.
Remember, we're not talking about the word walking, but the thing in the world
that the word invokes or refers to when we say that Socrates is walking.
Can this thing exist without Socrates?
Well, there could be walking without Socrates,
as Plato could be walking instead.
But could there be walking without there being somebody, or
some thing, doing the walking?
No. Walking needs a subject, an ontological
subject, in order to exist.
But Socrates doesn't need a subject.
He is a subject for other things.
This is the general point Aristotle is making in Chapter Two of The Categories,
when he talks of beings that are in a subject.
Now he's using "in" in a technical sense, which he explains as follows.
By 'in a subject', I mean what belongs in something,
not as a part, and cannot exist separately from what it is in.
So let's see how this explanation fits our example.
Socrates is walking.
Is the walking in Socrates?
Well, it's not anywhere else, so I think we can agree that it is in him.
Is it also in him, not as a part?
While walking certainly involves some of his parts more than others.
For example, his legs rather that his ears.
But walking is not itself a part of Socrates.
So we can agree that when Socrates is walking, the walking is in him,
not as a part.
Now what about whether the walking cannot exist separately from what it is in?
Well, there can be walking without Socrates, but not unless someone else,
Plato, or Aristotle, or you, is doing the walking.
That is, not without some subject, some underlying thing to support it.
So walking, which is in Socrates and not as a part,
cannot exist separately from being in something.
Thus walking, and anything else that is in a subject in this sense,
is a dependent kind of being.
It can't exist without something else for it to belong to.
So if you wanted to ask which is the more fundamental kind of being,
Socrates or walking, Aristotle thinks the answer is clear.
Socrates is more fundamental, more of a being, more real than walking.
Walking is like the poor relation of Socrates,
ontologically speaking, depending on Socrates for it's existence.
Now note the similarity of this relation of ontological dependence
to the one Plato invokes between sensibles and forms.
Except for Aristotle, the more fully real entity is a concrete
particular object familiar to us through experience, and
not an otherworldly form, accessible only through the intellect.
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