Ep. 279: Aristotle's "Categories" of Being (Part One)

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Casey, Paskin, Philosophy, Linsenmayer, Society & Culture, Alwan

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2021

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On the Categories (ca. 350 BCE), which purports to describe all the types of entities that exist. We mostly talk about substances, as A's presentation raises interesting questions about, e.g. the status of the species of substance, and the rest of the categories (e.g. quality, quantity, relative) rely on substances existing. So how exactly do these other categories relate to substances, and why does A divide the world the way he does?

Part two of this episode is only going to be available to you if you sign up at partiallyexaminedlife.com/support or via Apple Podcasts. Get it now or listen to a preview.

Sponsors: Get a free month of Great Courses lectures and lots of other great content at Wondrium.com/PEL. Get a free month's access to a vast library of guided meditations at Headspace.com/PEL.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This episode is sponsored by Headspace, Meditation Made Simple. Go to Headspace.com slash P-E-L.
0:14.2	We're listening to the partially examined life I podcasted by some guys who at one point
0:17.6	said on doing philosophy for living with then thought better of it. Our question for episode 279
0:22.8	is something like, what are the kinds of entities that exist? We read Aristotle's categories from
0:28.2	around 350 BC. More information at links to the text please visit partiallyexaminelife.com.
0:33.6	This is Mark Linton-Mire uniquely inhabiting the species Mark Linton-Mire in Madison, Wisconsin.
0:39.4	This is what I saw on one said to be in Cambridge but not said to be in myself in Cambridge.
0:49.2	This is Dylan Casey, present in Madison, Wisconsin but not said of Madison, Wisconsin.
0:54.8	Oh, had you planned that as well? Was that conversion? That was convert in metaphysics or something.
1:01.0	Yeah, because one of the categories is place. How are we not going to play off that?
1:05.4	Given that we're giving this publication. Well, it's not only that there's a category of place but
1:09.6	that there's also the use of this phrase being in. Present in. Yeah, present in.
1:15.2	And said of spoken of. It's a very interesting way of putting it.
1:19.6	Yeah. So this is a little appetizer that's categories to doing Aristotle's metaphysics proper.
1:26.4	That Aristotle's metaphysics is a fat and imposing book and the categories is small. It's like 40
1:32.5	pages and then you read the commentaries on it and they say, you know, some of those pages don't
1:37.3	even matter. You can just kind of ignore the later chapters. Of course, I read the whole thing.
1:41.2	So this is a nice and it is perhaps written earlier. It is the first part of the organon which in
1:47.6	other words, if you're reading Aristotle's sort of for his logical works, it's right at the beginning.
1:52.4	Dylan, are you trying to say something visually? In the organon and the order, it's the first one.
1:57.5	Yes. The low book. I know our listeners cannot see that I held up my copy of the low version
2:03.7	and it's Aristotle's, I don't know, there's 16 books or 20 books in it of these low, low
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mark Linsenmayer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Mark Linsenmayer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.