I have a question regarding St Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s works. I’ve been reading a series under the publisher ‘St. Augustines Dumb Ox Book’. I have these publishers commentary for St Aquinas’ commentary on the Physics, the Metaphysics, Posterior Analytics, and De Anima. Is there a commentary for the Categories? Thank you in advance.
8. 'Jerry is musical', signifying skill possession. I say this, because it is the germ to an Aristotelian solution to Wittgenstein's Going-on Problem (in Philosophical Investigations). Humans are naturally receptive to language in the form of verbal fluency and all the in same way (as with chemical affinity): there simply is not more than one way to receive and, thus, go-on from grammatical instruction (defective 'receptors' put aside, as they should be, since they cannot, by their very nature, be used to undermine the belief in standards of linguistic correctness).
There are some textbooks, which are a good place to start for knowing how to use Aristotelian logic without getting into disputed topics about meaning: R.E. Houser (CUA Press); John Oesterle are the most prominent. For a defense of "classical" / "traditional" logic against modern symbolic logic, see Henry Veatch's two books: (1) Two Logics (which is more polemical and shorter); and (2) Intentional Logic (which is a systematic exposition). Both are heavily influenced by the 17th cent. Thomist John of St. Thomas (Poinsot) and are, thus, not entirely reliable as historical expositions of St. Thomas's own thought. For two old, but fairly thorough overviews of Aquinas's logic, which are a little more in-depth than you would find in a textbook, but still fairly ahistorical, see Robert Schmidt, "The Domain of Logic"; Ralph McInerny, "The Logic of Analogy" (not to be confused with his inferior book, "Analogy in Aquinas"). For more recent work on Aquinas's logic in its historical context, look at the articles and collected volumes of E.J. Ashworth, Gyula Klima, Giorgio Pini, Fabrizio Amerini, and others. Ashworth's "Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic: A Preface to Aquinas on Analogy" is a great place to start, though I think it has some flaws.
First thank you for the exegesis on the 10 categories. I tend to agree with Kant. Although St Aquinas’ explanation is cogent, it seems to me arbitrary. I can predicate something of some something based on a category called ‘Identity’ which can be construed as neither just number or substance. Similarly, I can predicate contrariety of something that is in opposition to something but uniquely so (like a duality). And since this is neither just a quality or just a quantity, it can be construed as its own category. To try to state my position clearer, if a category exists outside of ten, then it is a separate category. And here ‘outside of’ can mean a category which either does not fall under the ten existing or that falls outside of the 10 by always requiring two or more combinations of the existing 10.
Yes, this book is the "Categories." You can find it in McKeon's "Basic Works of Aristotle" or in the Oxford "Complete Works of Aristotle." It is always the first book in these collections because it is the first part of philosophy. I'll put this info in the video description. I usually put the title of the book I'm commenting on in the title of the video. In this case it is after the "|" symbol. The McKeon translation of the Categories is better than the Oxford one and it is also cheaper to buy McKeon. If you pay more than $10 for McKeon, you are spending too much. You can find it at almost every Half Priced Books. In Latin translations of the Categories, the book was either called "Categoriae" or "Predicamenta." "Categoriae" is a transliteration of the Greek word for "Predicate." "Predicamenta" is obviously a literal translation of the Greek, but not a transliteration.
There aren't many. But for secondary literature on Thomas Aquinas's view of the categories, you can look at John Wippel (Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, c. 7), Giorgio Pini (Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus [which has a chapter on Aquinas]), Paul Symington (On Determining What There Is), and Greg Doolan (who has a few relevant articles). I don't agree with all of these authors, but they are the ones who have written at length on Aquinas and the categories. There is also a Brill anthology of articles on the Categories edited by Lloyd Newton and called "Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories." That is a good place to start. I also have an article on the different senses of "substance" and the relation of the Categories to metaphysics coming out in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly January 2022 if you are interested. Secondary literature on Aristotle and the Categories is usually not nearly as worthwhile as secondary literature on Aquinas and the Categories. Nevertheless, quite a bit has been written on Aristotle and the Categories. A standard treatment can be found in the magisterial W. & M. Kneale The Development of Logic. There is also a good book on the neoplatonic appropriation of Aristotle's Categories by Christos Evangeliou. Most other secondary literature on the topic I can't recommend.
@@ElliotPolskyPhilosophy On how many points does Kany depart from Aristotlian thought. I mean tried to make a list: a) the way he uses the word "analysis" and "synthesis" seems odd; analytical proposition being one in which the predicte discloses no new information about the Subject, whereas in synthetic proposition the predicte does provide new information about the subject. The term "analysis" is used with respect to the subject of the sentence, right? The way Kant uses the term "subject" in his book with respect to human being will begin to give a peculiar meaning to "subject" as opposed to the "object" or the thing in itself. From thereon "phenomenon" and "nomenon" will have special meaning. b) the way he misses the ten Categories, and the new Categories that he puts forward c) his use of the wprd "transcendental", etc. d) He only considers things from the point of view of the things as "understood" by the mind( so from logic's point of view really "studying Being under the aspect of properties that beings have as conceived by the mind"). Making "the thing itself" inaccessible to the mind.
Sir, the analogy Aquinas draws between linguistic and ontological categories of predication is instructive, but does it really answer Kant’s question? Why wouldn’t a Kantian also deem the former 'arbitrary,' simply a product of our way of verbally responding to noumena? Nay, isn’t such linguistic relativism something a phenomenalist himself would offer by way of a transcendental defense of the 10 Categories, in light of the putative impossibility of providing for them an objective, ontological basis? I should think that an Aristotelian would hold just the opposite view: language recapitulates ontology, not vice-versa. Why isn't the metaphysical onus upon the (heretic) Kant to show that there is something amiss with Aristotle's system? Deny Substance or any of the Accidents and see what sort of conceptual mess you end up with.
Kant would likely react differently than a modern Kantian. Kant himself goes on to attempt to do almost precisely what Aquinas had already done 5.5 centuries earlier (without Kant's being aware of Aquinas). Kant objects to Aristotle's ten categories by saying it is an arbitrary list. He solves his own problem by coming up with a new list of categories based on the "forms of judgment." This is very similar to the procedure Aquinas used in looking at the "modes of predication" to derive Aristotle's ten categories. The two main differences are: (a) Aquinas derives Aristotle's own ten categories whereas Kant derives a whole new list of categories not found in Aristotle, and (b) Aquinas's "modes of predicating" are based on Aristotle's book, On Interpretation, but Kant's "forms of judgment" are based on Aristotle's book, Prior Analytics. Aquinas's decision to look to On Interpretation is much more reasonable than Kant's decision to look to Prior Analytics because the former book is specifically about propositions whereas the latter only talks about propositions in order to study syllogisms of which propositions are an integral part. So, Aquinas beats Kant at his own game 5 centuries earlier. Modern Kantians, however, would make the argument you are making anyway. They would argue that the list is still fundamentally arbitrary because it is based on how humans happen to think or the divisions that only happen accidentally to apply to human speech and predication. This objection would have to be addressed within the logic of predication by showing that the division of predicates is exhaustive and that to say, "What if there is some other kind of predicate?" is a self-refuting question, not unlike the question, "What if there is something besides P and ~P?"
'SM = CK' arguably not an object level sentence. Perhaps best construed, a la Frege, as about names 'SM' & 'CK', to wit, that they are co-referential. What piece of information would an identity sentence utterer be intending to convey? That a thing is identical to itself? Who doesn't already know that? That someone actually has 2 names? That someone known by his interlocutor, by 1 of those names is known, by others, by the other? Obviously the latter hypothesis better explains such a speech act.
ST I, q. 13, a. 12 is the closest Aquinas gets to explaining a quasi-identity thesis of predication. Interestingly, he uses it not to explain sentences, like "Socrates is Socrates," but rather statements, like "Socrates is white," or "Socrates is human." Another important text to look at is In Metaphys., lib. 5, l. 9. There are disputes among Thomists about whether Aquinas has an "identity theory of predication" or an "inherence theory of predication." Most likely, this dispute is anachronistic and Aquinas's understanding of predication doesn't fit into either of these modern classifications.
25:30. Better: Definition (e.g., of Man) is made up of subject = definiendum (e.g., Man) + predicate = definiens (e.g., Rational Animal). Copula signifies their essential unity.
Sometimes we'll speak that way loosely, but strictly speaking, definitions do not include either the subject or the copula, but only the predicate, which is composed of two parts, genus and difference.
@@ElliotPolskyPhilosophy Fine with me, that is just the way I was taught. But they were modernists anyway. You're fantastic: great precision and clarity. I just sent your channel to my son, no pun intended, and will pray for your work.
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you're the best for explaining Aristotle; keep going.
I second this.
I concur.
Thank you! Absolutely underrated channel. Keep up the good work
This was so helpful. Brilliant. Thank you.
This was very helpful. Thanks for the explanation! Hope you make many more of these.
Thanks for your channel, I'm going to use it a lot and also share it to some friends. This is a huge help.
Thank you! Glad you liked it, and thanks for sharing
Thank you, Elliot, this is tremendously helpful for my study group!
27:17 this first category of a bad definition is the kind of definition Meno first provides Socrates in the dialogue Meno (On Virtue).
Thank you very much! This is very helpful.
I have a question regarding St Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s works. I’ve been reading a series under the publisher ‘St. Augustines Dumb Ox Book’. I have these publishers commentary for St Aquinas’ commentary on the Physics, the Metaphysics, Posterior Analytics, and De Anima. Is there a commentary for the Categories? Thank you in advance.
8. 'Jerry is musical', signifying skill possession. I say this, because it is the germ to an Aristotelian solution to Wittgenstein's Going-on Problem (in Philosophical Investigations). Humans are naturally receptive to language in the form of verbal fluency and all the in same way (as with chemical affinity): there simply is not more than one way to receive and, thus, go-on from grammatical instruction (defective 'receptors' put aside, as they should be, since they cannot, by their very nature, be used to undermine the belief in standards of linguistic correctness).
What are some good books on logical philosophy ( of Aristotle-Thomastic thought)?
There are some textbooks, which are a good place to start for knowing how to use Aristotelian logic without getting into disputed topics about meaning: R.E. Houser (CUA Press); John Oesterle are the most prominent.
For a defense of "classical" / "traditional" logic against modern symbolic logic, see Henry Veatch's two books: (1) Two Logics (which is more polemical and shorter); and (2) Intentional Logic (which is a systematic exposition). Both are heavily influenced by the 17th cent. Thomist John of St. Thomas (Poinsot) and are, thus, not entirely reliable as historical expositions of St. Thomas's own thought.
For two old, but fairly thorough overviews of Aquinas's logic, which are a little more in-depth than you would find in a textbook, but still fairly ahistorical, see Robert Schmidt, "The Domain of Logic"; Ralph McInerny, "The Logic of Analogy" (not to be confused with his inferior book, "Analogy in Aquinas").
For more recent work on Aquinas's logic in its historical context, look at the articles and collected volumes of E.J. Ashworth, Gyula Klima, Giorgio Pini, Fabrizio Amerini, and others. Ashworth's "Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic: A Preface to Aquinas on Analogy" is a great place to start, though I think it has some flaws.
Thank you!
First thank you for the exegesis on the 10 categories. I tend to agree with Kant. Although St Aquinas’ explanation is cogent, it seems to me arbitrary. I can predicate something of some something based on a category called ‘Identity’ which can be construed as neither just number or substance. Similarly, I can predicate contrariety of something that is in opposition to something but uniquely so (like a duality). And since this is neither just a quality or just a quantity, it can be construed as its own category. To try to state my position clearer, if a category exists outside of ten, then it is a separate category. And here ‘outside of’ can mean a category which either does not fall under the ten existing or that falls outside of the 10 by always requiring two or more combinations of the existing 10.
Please, Can you post the book we need to follow this course? Reference?
Yes, this book is the "Categories." You can find it in McKeon's "Basic Works of Aristotle" or in the Oxford "Complete Works of Aristotle." It is always the first book in these collections because it is the first part of philosophy. I'll put this info in the video description. I usually put the title of the book I'm commenting on in the title of the video. In this case it is after the "|" symbol.
The McKeon translation of the Categories is better than the Oxford one and it is also cheaper to buy McKeon. If you pay more than $10 for McKeon, you are spending too much. You can find it at almost every Half Priced Books.
In Latin translations of the Categories, the book was either called "Categoriae" or "Predicamenta." "Categoriae" is a transliteration of the Greek word for "Predicate." "Predicamenta" is obviously a literal translation of the Greek, but not a transliteration.
I'm following along with the Mckeon's Basic Works of Aristotle. Just finished Saint John of Damascus Philosophical Chapters
Can you reccommed any scholars who has written about this book? I'm searching for Aristotalian scholars that I can follow in general.
You do make this a lot easier. When I read the second chapter it was so confusing.
There aren't many.
But for secondary literature on Thomas Aquinas's view of the categories, you can look at John Wippel (Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, c. 7), Giorgio Pini (Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus [which has a chapter on Aquinas]), Paul Symington (On Determining What There Is), and Greg Doolan (who has a few relevant articles). I don't agree with all of these authors, but they are the ones who have written at length on Aquinas and the categories. There is also a Brill anthology of articles on the Categories edited by Lloyd Newton and called "Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories." That is a good place to start. I also have an article on the different senses of "substance" and the relation of the Categories to metaphysics coming out in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly January 2022 if you are interested.
Secondary literature on Aristotle and the Categories is usually not nearly as worthwhile as secondary literature on Aquinas and the Categories. Nevertheless, quite a bit has been written on Aristotle and the Categories. A standard treatment can be found in the magisterial W. & M. Kneale The Development of Logic. There is also a good book on the neoplatonic appropriation of Aristotle's Categories by Christos Evangeliou. Most other secondary literature on the topic I can't recommend.
@@ElliotPolskyPhilosophy On how many points does Kany depart from Aristotlian thought. I mean tried to make a list:
a) the way he uses the word "analysis" and "synthesis" seems odd; analytical proposition being one in which the predicte discloses no new information about the Subject, whereas in synthetic proposition the predicte does provide new information about the subject. The term "analysis" is used with respect to the subject of the sentence, right? The way Kant uses the term "subject" in his book with respect to human being will begin to give a peculiar meaning to "subject" as opposed to the "object" or the thing in itself. From thereon "phenomenon" and "nomenon" will have special meaning.
b) the way he misses the ten Categories, and the new Categories that he puts forward
c) his use of the wprd "transcendental", etc.
d) He only considers things from the point of view of the things as "understood" by the mind( so from logic's point of view really "studying Being under the aspect of properties that beings have as conceived by the mind"). Making "the thing itself" inaccessible to the mind.
Sir, the analogy Aquinas draws between linguistic and ontological categories of predication is instructive, but does it really answer Kant’s question? Why wouldn’t a Kantian also deem the former 'arbitrary,' simply a product of our way of verbally responding to noumena? Nay, isn’t such linguistic relativism something a phenomenalist himself would offer by way of a transcendental defense of the 10 Categories, in light of the putative impossibility of providing for them an objective, ontological basis? I should think that an Aristotelian would hold just the opposite view: language recapitulates ontology, not vice-versa. Why isn't the metaphysical onus upon the (heretic) Kant to show that there is something amiss with Aristotle's system? Deny Substance or any of the Accidents and see what sort of conceptual mess you end up with.
Kant would likely react differently than a modern Kantian. Kant himself goes on to attempt to do almost precisely what Aquinas had already done 5.5 centuries earlier (without Kant's being aware of Aquinas). Kant objects to Aristotle's ten categories by saying it is an arbitrary list. He solves his own problem by coming up with a new list of categories based on the "forms of judgment." This is very similar to the procedure Aquinas used in looking at the "modes of predication" to derive Aristotle's ten categories. The two main differences are: (a) Aquinas derives Aristotle's own ten categories whereas Kant derives a whole new list of categories not found in Aristotle, and (b) Aquinas's "modes of predicating" are based on Aristotle's book, On Interpretation, but Kant's "forms of judgment" are based on Aristotle's book, Prior Analytics. Aquinas's decision to look to On Interpretation is much more reasonable than Kant's decision to look to Prior Analytics because the former book is specifically about propositions whereas the latter only talks about propositions in order to study syllogisms of which propositions are an integral part. So, Aquinas beats Kant at his own game 5 centuries earlier.
Modern Kantians, however, would make the argument you are making anyway. They would argue that the list is still fundamentally arbitrary because it is based on how humans happen to think or the divisions that only happen accidentally to apply to human speech and predication. This objection would have to be addressed within the logic of predication by showing that the division of predicates is exhaustive and that to say, "What if there is some other kind of predicate?" is a self-refuting question, not unlike the question, "What if there is something besides P and ~P?"
'SM = CK' arguably not an object level sentence. Perhaps best construed, a la Frege, as about names 'SM' & 'CK', to wit, that they are co-referential. What piece of information would an identity sentence utterer be intending to convey? That a thing is identical to itself? Who doesn't already know that? That someone actually has 2 names? That someone known by his interlocutor, by 1 of those names is known, by others, by the other? Obviously the latter hypothesis better explains such a speech act.
ST I, q. 13, a. 12 is the closest Aquinas gets to explaining a quasi-identity thesis of predication. Interestingly, he uses it not to explain sentences, like "Socrates is Socrates," but rather statements, like "Socrates is white," or "Socrates is human." Another important text to look at is In Metaphys., lib. 5, l. 9. There are disputes among Thomists about whether Aquinas has an "identity theory of predication" or an "inherence theory of predication." Most likely, this dispute is anachronistic and Aquinas's understanding of predication doesn't fit into either of these modern classifications.
25:30. Better: Definition (e.g., of Man) is made up of subject = definiendum (e.g., Man) + predicate = definiens (e.g., Rational Animal). Copula signifies their essential unity.
Sometimes we'll speak that way loosely, but strictly speaking, definitions do not include either the subject or the copula, but only the predicate, which is composed of two parts, genus and difference.
@@ElliotPolskyPhilosophy Fine with me, that is just the way I was taught. But they were modernists anyway. You're fantastic: great precision and clarity. I just sent your channel to my son, no pun intended, and will pray for your work.
@@MyRobertallen Thank you, that's very kind.
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