Trivium

Once he has finished the preliminary teaching of the Categories and named the ten categories, Aristotle turns to the first of them, which is substance. He gives the whole of Chapter 5 to it. The chapter opens with two paragraphs. The first defines primary substance and the second names the secondary substances. Following the commentary of St. Albert the Great, this article explains four things: the sense in which the logician uses the word “substance,” which things are substances in the fullest sense, what a primary substance is and why it is called primary, and what the secondary substances are. … Continue

This study covers the second paragraph of Chapter 2 of Aristotle’s Categories, from “Of spoken things, some are predicated of a subject,” to “but is not predicated of any subject.” It explains the text with the help of St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas. I. Primary Source Text Of spoken things, some are predicated of a subject, but are in no subject. Thus, “man” is predicated of a subject (viz. an individual man), but is in no other subject. Other things are in a subject, and are predicated of no other subjects. (By being in a subject, however, … Continue

In this lesson we study the first paragraph of Chapter 2 of Aristotle’s Categories, from “Of things which are spoken, some are spoken in connection,” down to “man, ox, runs, conquers.” I. Primary Source Text Of things which are spoken, some are spoken in connection, but others without connection. Those therefore which are enunciated according to connection are such as, “The man runs.”, “The man is victorious.”; but those without connection are such as, “man”, “ox”, “runs”, “conquers”. II. Exposition by St. Albert the Great In the last lesson Aristotle settled how words relate to the things they name. He … Continue