On The Categories As A Response To The Platonic Forms

man is an imperfect part, but a man is man as he is part of the same levels of category as other men.

A primary substance is what I have been calling a token. An individual example is a primary substance, such as Descartes. Secondary substances are the genus and species. Descartes is of the species of particular men, and their genus is animal. Aristotle says: “if the primary substances did not exists it would be impossible for any of the other things to exist.” So if Descartes did not exist, it would be impossible for anything else, i.e the form of Descartes/man to exist. It seems however that the realm of the forms exists and would exist without Descartes/ primary substance, or anything at all. According to Plato the forms are everlasting, they are unchangeable and eternal. This leads to some strange consequences, such as: in the time of dinosaurs there was a form of car. According to Plato, there is now a form of everything that was, and everything that will be. To Aristotle, and I, this seems farfetched. Suppose that sometime in the future a device is invented which can combine two different animals into one new animal.

Let us call this device the xanator. There can not be a form of the xanator, because an example of the xanator does not exist yet. Without that primary substance, there can be no form. If the form of the xanator exists then a token xanator must also exist because in order for there to be a perfect representation of something, that thing must actually exist, otherwise there could be no form of it. Since the xanator does not exist (or whatever invention in the future) there is no form, therefore the forms do not exist. I am not saying that if one xanator does not exist, the form does not, I am saying that if there are no tokens, there can be no type. If there are no men, there can not be a perfect man: “animal is predicated of man and therefore also of the individual man; for were it not in some individual body it would not be in body at all”. This applies to the Descartes example above as well.

Aristotle says that we should start with what is most knowable/general to us. The forms are not like this. What is, is that all things are ordered, in such a way that everything belongs to a particular species of which all have a genera, which themselves have one too, until the regress comes to an end. What makes an ant an ant is that we call it ant, because it falls under the same species as other things which we also call ant. We notice through observation similarities between things, and we are able to create a species of which all ants are apart. Now there may be other things which are not ants specifically, but have similar existence, of which they are another species, and the genus which both fall under would be insects. There is no perfect insect of which all other insects of different sorts are an imperfect representation of, nor is there a form of earwig, or form of red ant, of which individuals are an imperfect copies of. There is however a species of earwigs, of which the same hierarchy of things apply which allows us to call a thing an earwig of the species earwig, of the genus insects, etc. “Whenever one thing is predicated of another as of a subject, all things said of what is predicated will be said of the subject also.” The individual man is that of all men, but men is a predicate of animal too, and then two legged animal, and then perhaps one that is rational, or can cry. For man is all of these things. A man is both man and animal. He is not man insofar as he is an imperfect particular of the universal man, but is man insofar as he shares these qualities with other men.

Man is not some quality which is in him, it is the classification in which describes what type of thing he is. Descartes is of the type Man. As was stated above, if there were no men, then the universal of Man would not exist. The same goes for Aristotle’s example of whiteness, in Schwartz 2