Splendid Formation

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Aristotle’s Ten Categories
(from his work Categories, ~350 BC — part of the Organon)
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Aristotle created these ten basic ways of describing anything that exists or can be talked about. It’s a straightforward framework that became a foundation for clear thinking, logic, and philosophy lasting more than two thousand years.

Here they are, with their original Greek and Latin names:

1. Substance (ousia / substantia) — What a thing essentially is (a human, a tree, a horse).

2. Quantity (poson / quantitas) — How much or how many (size, number, length).

3. Quality (poion / qualitas) — What kind or characteristic (color, shape, virtue).

4. Relation (pros ti / relatio) — How it relates to something else (double, father, knowledge of).

5. Place (pou / ubi) — Where it is (in the marketplace, in Athens).

6. Time (pote / quando) — When it exists or happens (yesterday, next year).

7. Position (keisthai / situs) — Orientation or posture (sitting, standing, lying down).

8. State (echein / habitus) — What it possesses or is wearing (armed, shod, having a cloak).

9. Action (poiein / actio) — What it is doing (cutting, burning, healing).

10. Passion (paschein / passio) — What is being done to it (being cut, being burned, being healed).

A simple yet useful idea from ancient Greece that still helps bring order to our thinking today.