范畴篇

范畴篇或称“范畴论”（希腊语：Κατηγορίαι，拉丁语：Categoriae）是古希腊哲学家亚里士多德的一篇著作，收录于《工具论》中作为其一部分。篇中例举了所有在一个命题中可以作为主语或谓语出现的事物的范畴。“范畴”翻译自“κατηγορία”，是由日本学者井上哲次郎在《哲学字汇》（1881年）中借用《尚书‧洪范》中“洪范九畴”一词作为英文category的译语而来。

“κατηγορία”一词源自古希腊日常用语中的动词—κατηγορεῖν，有指控之意。在范畴论中，此词变作了名词和技术概念，用作分析句子的表达形式，有述说和述谓之意。

其中亚里士多德提出的十个范畴于1631年傅汛际和李之藻合译的逻辑学教材《名理探》中被译为“十伦”。这十个传统范畴的现代汉语译名分别是：实体、数量、性质、关系、地点、时间、姿态、状况、活动、遭受。。这些范畴是相互独立的，但是它们可以相互关联，并且通过将它们组合使用，可以进一步细分出更多的分类。在范畴学中，亚里士多德提出了一些基本的概念和术语，如“实体”、“属性”、“关系”、“类别”等，这些概念和术语为后来的哲学家和逻辑学家提供了重要的思想基础。

The Categories (Ancient Greek: Κατηγορίαι, romanized: Katēgoriai; Latin: Categoriae or Praedicamenta) is a text from Aristotle's Organon that enumerates all the possible kinds of things that can be the subject or the predicate of a proposition. They are "perhaps the single most heavily discussed of all Aristotelian notions". The work is brief enough to be divided not into books, as is usual with Aristotle's works, but into fifteen chapters.

The Categories places every object of human apprehension under one of ten categories (known to medieval writers as the Latin term praedicamenta). Aristotle intended them to enumerate everything that can be expressed without composition or structure, thus anything that can be either the subject or the predicate of a proposition.

The text

The antepraedicamenta

The text begins with an explication of what Aristotle means by "synonymous", or univocal words, what is meant by "homonymous", or equivocal words, and what is meant by "paronymous", or denominative (sometimes translated "derivative") words.

It then divides forms of speech as being:

Either simple, without composition or structure, such as "man", "horse", "fights".

Or having composition and structure, such as "a man argued", "the horse runs".

Only composite forms of speech can be true or false.

Next, he distinguishes between what is said "of" a subject and what is "in" a subject. What is said "of" a subject describes the kind of thing that it is as a whole, answering the question "what is it?" What is said to be "in" a subject is a predicate that does not describe it as a whole but cannot exist without the subject, such as the shape of something. The latter has come to be known as inherence.

Of all the things that exist,

Some may be predicated (that is, said) of a subject, but are in no subject; as man may be predicated of James or John (one may say "John is a man"), but is not in any subject.

Some are in a subject, but cannot be predicated of any subject. Thus, a certain individual point of grammatical knowledge is in me as in a subject, but it cannot be predicated of any subject; because it is an individual thing.

Some are both in a subject and able to be predicated of a subject, for example science, which is in the mind as in a subject, and may be predicated of geometry as of a subject ("Geometry is science").

Some can be neither in any subject nor can be predicated of any subject. These are individual substances, which cannot be predicated, because they are individuals; and cannot be in a subject, because they are substances.

The praedicamenta

Then we come to the categories themselves, whose definitions depend upon these four forms of predication. Aristotle's own text in Ackrill's standard English version is:

Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being-affected. To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of when: yesterday, last-year; of being-in-a-position: is-lying, is-sitting; of having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of doing: cutting, burning; of being-affected: being-cut, being-burned. (1b25-2a4)

A brief explanation (with some alternative translations) is as follows:

Substance (οὐσία, ousia, essence or substance). Substance is that which cannot be predicated of anything or be said to be in anything. Hence, this particular man or that particular tree are substances. Later in the text, Aristotle calls these particulars “primary substances”, to distinguish them from secondary substances, which are universals and can be predicated. Hence, Socrates is a primary substance, while man is a secondary substance. Man is predicated of Socrates, and therefore all that is predicated of man is predicated of Socrates.