Aristotle's Categories and the doctrine of the features of being

Abstract

This is an attempt to read the categories in the homonymous Aristotelian
treatise as a first sketch of a regional ontology, centered on sensible substances. Focusing on substance, quantity, quality, relative, doing and being affected, this paper purports to show the two main strategies Aristotle seems to employ to arrive at a list of them: (a) basic features, whose set of satisfaction or non-satisfaction of each of them determines the categorical nature of every item, and (b) the unique property that characterizes each category in contrast to all others. Considerations are then made to link this first ontological sketch to issues discussed in Book Lambda and Zeta of Metaphysics, in order to suggest the main directions his new (and general) ontology will take as it evolves into a unified theory of substance.