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ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

Aristotelian Relativities
DAVID SEDLEY

In chapter 7 of the Categories, devoted to the category of

relativity (rrp6c n), Aristotle starts with a definition of the relative (6a 36-b 8):
The kind of things that are spoken of as relative are all those which,
whatever things they themselves are, are said to b~~.~J other things, or in some
other relation to another thing. For example, it is in comparison to something else that what is larger is spoken of as the thing that it is : it is
spoken of as larger than something.. And it is in relation to something
else that what is double is spoken of as the thing that it is : it is spoken
of as the double of something. Likewise everything else of this kind.
The following kinds of thing are also relative: state, disposition,
perception, understanding, position. For all the items listed are said to
be the thing that they are (and not anything else) of other things. For
a state is spoken of the state of something, and understanding as
understanding of something, and a position as the position of something, and likewise the others too.
So rela~~es are all the things which, whatever things they themselves are,

m-e said to be ~father things, or in some other relation to another thing.

At the end of the chapter (8a 13ff.) he raises a worry about

whether this definition will allow some substances to be relative, namely those which are themselves the organic parts of
larger substances. We must recall that in the Categories he has
none of his later qualms about allowing some substances to
be composed ofsubstances 1 Hence his question: won't those
I. See Cat: 3a 29-32, and cf. Met. Z 2, l028b 9-10, with the later retractions at Z
13, I039a 3ff, and 16, 1040b 5-15.

325

substances which are parts of larger substances be relative,

namely to the wholes of which they are parts ? The worry is a
proper one, because he has already spoken of the parts of
substances as falling into both categories: in chapter 5, at
3a 29-32, they were substances, yet in chapter 7, at 6b 36-7a 22,
relatives include wing, head and rudder.
Aristotle does not pause to explain why this double classification would matter. It is not necessarily that he objects in
principle to OJ)e and the same item being placed in two or
more different categories, since at the end of chapter 8 he
sees nothing absurd in the possibility that some qualities may
also be relatives. But it is not hard to intuit why, regardless of
that question, he does not want any substances to be relatives.
It would offend against the fundamental notion of a
substance as something with its own intrinsic nature 2 Hence
his statement of the problem at 8a 13-28 :
There is a problem whether, as seems to be the case, no substance
is spoken of as relative, or whether this is possible with regard to some
secondary substances.
Wtth regard to primary substances it is true, since neither wholes
nor their parts are spoken of as relative : some man is not spoken of as
some man of something (nv6c; nc; av9pwn:oc;), nor some cow as some
cow of something. The same applies to their parts. Some hand is not
spoken of as some hand of something (nv6c; nc; xelp), but as something's
hand (nv6c; xtdp), and some head is not spoken of as some head of
something, but as something's head.
So too for secondary substances, at any rate most of them. For
example, man is not spoken of as man of something, nor cow as cow
of something, nor wood as wood of something. Rather, it is the fJossession of something [or someone ]. In cases like this, then, it is clear
that they are not relative. However, in the case of some secondary
substances it is more debatable. For example, head is spoken of as
something's head, and hand as something's hand, and likewise for each
thing of this kind. Hence these things would appear to be relative.

Aristotle's point is metaphysical, not linguistic. It is important not to be misled into thinking that he is in any way appea2. Thus e.g. Simplicius, In Ar. Cat. 197.7-9. At Met. N I, 1088a 27-35, relatives
are argued by Aristotle to be the least substantial of all things.

.:>..::;u

ling to what can and cannot be said in the Greek language. It

is not even obvious that Greek usage would consider an
expression like nv6c nc Xtp unacceptable. His observation
about primary and secondary substances is rather, I suppose,
as follows. If a hand appears to be relative, namely to its
owner, it is not in virtue being this particular hand that it is
relative, but in virtue of being a hand- that is, not because of
its individuality, the hallmark of a primary substance, but
because of its species, the hallmark of a secondary substance.
TI1us it is qua secondary substance that a hand appears to be
relative. (The point would be clearer if someone gave their
hands proper names, say Bill and Ben. V\lhile hand,
being a part of the organism, always means somebody 's or somethings hand, Bill would not mean s01nebody 's BilL)
It is therefore, according to Aristotle, on secondary
substances that we should focus when we confront the worry
that parts will prove to be categorial hybrids, both substances
and relatives. This danger leads him next to question his
original definition of relative (8a 28-b 3):
If then the definition we have given of relatives is adequate, it will
be extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve a solution according
to which no substance is spoken of as relative. If on the other hand it
is not adequate, but those things are relative for which to be is the same
as to be disjJOsed relatively to something (ore TO ~::Ivm Tath6v EO'Tt T<{.> rrp6c; Tt
rrwc ex~::tv), perhaps something could be said in reply. The former definition does apply to all relative things, yet this is not what their relativity is, to be spoken of as what they are of other things.
This makes it clear that, if one knows definitely some relative thing,
one will also know definitely the thing which it is spoken of as relative
to. It is even intrinsically obvious. For if one knows, of some specific
thing, that it is relative, and if, for those things which are relative, to be is
the same as to be disfJosed relatively to something (ecrn 6E. To ~::Ivm Tote; rrp6c n
T<XlJTO T<{.) rtp6c; Tt 7thl(; EXELV), one also knows the thing to which it is relatively disposed. For if one does not know in the slightest what the thing
is relatively disposed to, one will not even know whether it is relatively
disposed.

Aristotle has here introduced, and apparently endorsed, a

new and stronger definition of relativity. I shall leave aside for

327

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

DAVID SEDLEY

ow the meaning of this definition. For the present~ the

t point to note is that on the revised definition,
u,. ...... tgn not on the original one, definitely knowing a relaentails definitely knowing its correlative. We may call
his prinCiple of cognitive symmetry .
So far Aristotle has appealed only to what is intrinsically
"evident from the nature of relativity (as re-defined here). His
~ext move is to clarify the same principle by illustrating it
:!rith some specific examples of relative predicates (8b 3-15):
3

This kind of thing is clear in individual cases too For example, if

one knows definitely4 that some specific thing is double, it directly
follows that one also knows definitely ofwhat it is double. If there is no
definite thing of which one knows that it is double, one does not know
in the slightest that it is double. Likewise if one knows that some
specific thing is more beautiful, one must aLso, on account of this,
know definitely what it is more beautiful than.
One will not know indefinitely, that this thing is more beautiful
than something inferior. For that sort of thing turns out to be belief,
not knowledge ; and one will not have certain knowledge that it is
more beautiful than something inferior, since it might happen that
there is nothing inferior to it.
Hence it is evident that, of necessity, whenever one knows definitely
something relative, one also knows definitely the thing which it is
spoken of as relative to.

Aristotle has now, if not defined, at least illustrated what he

means by definite knowledge. To know definitely that xis
F-er, you must know that xis F-er than y, where y is something
<< definite , and not merely that xis F-er than whatever is less
Fthan itself, which would count as something indefinite.

3. 8b 3-4, xa.l rrl ThlV xa.9' exacrTa. BE. BfjA.ov TO TOtOUTOV. This is not, I think, a
move from universals to particulars, i.e. from secondary to primary substances, so
much as one from the general principle to its further defence via exam pies :
cf. 2a 34-6. The examples may perhaps involve particulars (depending how one
interprets 1:6Be n at 8a 38, b 4), but at any rate the relatives in question are universals which are said of those particulars.
4. I am assuming that no difference is intended between ~ptcr[Jkvwc and
O:<{>wptcr[livwc;.

U.t\.VIU :)E.ULEY

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

Definite knowledge, thus explicated, is at the heart of

Aristotle's principle of cognitive symmetry: on the revised
definition of relativity, definite knowledge of any relative
requires correspondingly definite knowledge of its correlative. He is now ready to unfold his solution (8b 15-21). For
the moment I shall translate the transmitted text, without
trying to cure a crux that it contains:

promising. We might supply the following illustration6 If I see

a hand sticking out of the shower curtain, I could if I wanted
pull back the curtain to reveal its owner, but I can definitely
know that it is a hand even without knowing whose hand it is.
However, the solution is unsatisfactory in at least two
respects. First, it fails to take account of the fact that Aristotle
is explicitly talking here of a problem focused on secondary
substances (Sa 24-8) 7 The issue of identifying the owner of a
hand would, one may suppose, only arise with a particular
hand, which is a primary substance. Admittedly the expression to know definitely to what it is that this head or hand
belongs (8b 18) may appear to confirm that Aristotle really
is talking about primary substances, but if he is, the passage
loses all coherence. I shall shortly offer a way out of this
impasse.
Second, the solution overlooks the fact that in Aristotle's
view the correlative of hand is not to be located in its
owner, viewed as either a primary substance like Socrates or a
secondary substance like man or animal. As he points out at
6b 36-7a 18, to suppose that such pairs as wing and
bird, or head and animal, are correlatives is to
misunderstand what a correlative is. If x is relative to y then y
is relative to x. But if you say that head is relative to
animal ,you face that problem that the alleged correlative,

But as for head and hand, and each of the things of this kind which
are substances, one can know definitely what thing each itself is
without its being necessary to know definitely what it is spoken of relatively to. tFor it is not possible to know definitely to what it is that this
head or hand belongst ( TLVO(; yap <XUTY) Xe<f>aA.r) i} TLVO(; xetp oux
crnv d6vat wptcr{.LEVW(;, 8b 18-19). So these things will not be relative. And if they are not relative, it will be true to say that no substance
is relative.

Here Aristotle takes as his example the substances head

and hand , and argues that on the principles he has
previously laid down they will turn out not to be relatives. The
ground is that you can know definitely what a head or hand
is without knowing definitely what its alleged correlative is;
hence, on the revised definition of relativity now in operation, a head or hand is not a relative, and can be safely
contained within the category of substance.
But why does Aristotle expect us to agree to this cognitive
asymtnetry? It is hard to make sense of the transmitted text,
according to which it is not possible to know definitely to
what it is that this head or hand belongs . Of course it is
possible. This hand (the one I am now holding up) belongs
to me, for example. The evident absurdity of Aristotle's text
has led Ackrill to emend it, supplying <&vayxatov> after mix:
it is not <necessary> to know definitely to what it is that this
head or hand belongs5 This solution may at first sight look
5. J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De lnterpretatione (Oxford 1963), p. 23.
Ackrill is followed in this by M. Mignucci, Aristotle's definitions of relatives in Cat.
7, Phronesis 31 (1986), 101-27, p. 121, who calls it inescapable. This emendation
is at least preferable to the device, adopted by many translators (e.g. H.G. Apostle,
Aristotle's Categories and Propositions (De interjJretatione) (Grinnell 1980), p. 15;

3~Y

Y. Pelletier, Les Attributions (categories) (Paris 1983), p. 42; K. Oehler, Aristoteles:

Kategorien (Berlin 1984), p. 21; M. Zanatta, Aristotele, Le Categorie (Milan I 989),
p. 343) of translating it is not necessary ... vel sim. without even signalling an

emendation. I see no way in which <ivaytea!ov could be left for the reader to supply
from its occurrence in the preceding sentence at 8b 18, as these translators may
be supposing it is.
6. Cf. Porphyry, In Ar. Cat. 126.10-14, Ammonius, In Ar. Cat. 79.17-19, Simplicius,lnAr. Cat. 200.7-9,27-9
7. Ackrill's implicit assumption that primary substances are at issue (op. cit.
pp. 102-103) is prefigured in the ancient commentary tradition, starting with
Porphyry, In Ar. Cat. 126.10ff. Mignucci (art. cit., pp. 121-2) avoids this mistake,
but is consequently driven to devise a bizarrely ingenious equivalent of my showercurtain example, where someone knows what a paw as such is (i.e. the secondary
substance) without ever having found out what it belongs to.

;JJU

DAVID SEDLEY

animal, cannot plausibly called relative to head 8 He is

therefore emphatic that the proper correlative of wing
( rrrcp6v) is winged (ITTpwr6v), that of head ( X<f>o:ll.r))
headed
( X<f>o:llwr6v), that of rudder >> ( ITT}oafl.wv)
ruddered ( ITT}oo:fl.twr6v), and so on. Although he does not
include hand in this list, the ancient commentators were
undoubtedly right that this is merely accidental, and that
Aristotle's proper correlative of hand would be handed
(Xtpwr6v). Ackrill is apparently forgetting this rule when he
assumes that a head or a hand would, if a relative, have some
named individual as its correlative.
These objections may also set us on the track of a better
solution. "What we must seek is a reading which ensures that
Aristotle is indeed here talking about secondary substances,
and that he observes his own rule about how to identify and
describe correlatives. To achieve this, there is no need to
emend (in the proper sense of the word). We should merely
reverse a breathing and move an accent; and since Aristotle
wrote without breathings or accents, no violence is being
done to his text. At 8b 18, r{voc; yap o:urn f) xc<f>o:!Lij f] r{voc; f)
Xtp, instead of aurT} read o:urr). The meaning is now For it is
not possible to know definitely to what it is that head or hand
as such belongs 9
"Why head or hand as such ? "Whether or not the Platonic
overtones of the expression o:un) f) x<f>o:ll.r) are intended - and
this standard Platonic locution for a Form may, after all, seem
8. Aristotle's stated ground is the absence of a strict one-to-one correlation
bernreen heads and animals, or bernreen wings and birds : there are animals
without heads, and wings that do not belong to birds. I find this an unsatisfying
reason. It would imply that, where such a one-to-one correlation obtains, say for
elephant and trunk, we do have a genuine pair of correlatives. But a term like
elephant, or for that matter animal or bird)>, fails to satisfy either of the
two definitions of relative proposed in chapter 7; such items should be expected,
on the contrary, to be typical examples of substances, and Aristotle might have
done better to give this as the reason for excluding pairs like head/animal and
wing/bird as correlatives.
9. Against the traditional reading, I can also point out that Aristotle's normal
pronoun for indicating an individual is nc or OOE, not ouroc, which Bonitz's Index
Aristotelicus does not even acknowledge to have such a usage.

ARISTOTELIAN RELATIVITIES

331

reasonable enough way to designate an Aristotelian seconsubstance10 - I believe that the main point of the expresis to draw attention to a shift that has occurred between
the preceding examples and the present one. In those earlier
pies, the relative terms under consideration functioned
as predicates : knowing that x is double , is more beauriful ,etc. The problematic case now introduced, by contrast,
takes the supposedly relative term as itself the subject of predi:tation : with regard to head, etc., taken in their own right as
subject~ 1, we can know definitely what thing each itself is
(nun) f.LEV orrp crnv, 8b 16-17), but not necessarily know definitely what it is relative to. That is, there is a cognitive asymmetry between knowing what the (supposedly) relative item
itself is and knowing what its correlative is.
And why the asymmetry? Aristotle appears to be absolutely
right that, when taking as your subject the secondary
substance head, you can know definitely that a head is such
and such a kind of thing (say, a bodily part with certain specialised functions in sense-perception and the ingestion of
food), yet that you cannot- not just that you need not- know
definitely what a head is the head of. This latter is because
what a head is the head of is, properly speaking, simply the
headed. And one who claims to know that what a head
belongs to is the headed is no more professing definite knowledge than one who claims to know that what the more beautiful is more beautiful than is whatever is less beautiful than it.
We may sum up Aristotle's argument as follows. Consider
those secondary substances which are parts of further secondary substances, e. g. head taken as a universal rather than
as a particular. Such items may appear to belong to the category of relativity, and thus to cross a categorial boundary
which should at all costs be respected. However, we can avoid
10. Secondary substances are c:ton and yevT}, and it is widely accepted that their
demotion to the second rank has a directly Platonic reference ; so the Platonising
language is not totally out of place, even if Aristotle may well not use the Platonic
locution elsewhere in precisely this way.
11. Cf. Plato, Phd. 74b-c, where o:tmx rO: 'tmx is similarly used to pick out as
subject what was previously the predicate, while at the same time serving as a standard Form-locution.

,'),')~

DAVID SED LEY

this outcome if we insist on a certain revised definition of

relative. From this revised definition there follows a principle of cognitive symmetry: you can have definite knowledge
concerning some relative item only if you have correspondingly definite knowledge concerning its correlative. Secondary substances like head disobey this principle: although
you can have definite knowledge as to what a head as such is,
you cannot have definite knowledge as to what a head
belongs to, namely the headed. Therefore, on the revised
definition of relative, substantial parts are not relatives
after all, and, if we want to save the integrity of the substance
category, it is now saved.
My next concern is to ask what this revised definition
means, and how it differs from the original one. To repeat,
the original definition was (6a 36-7):
The kind of things that are spoken of as relativ~~are all those which,
whatever things they themselves are, are said to bee2'fother things, or
in some other relation to another thing.
rrp6c; n () T<X L'ot<XUL'<X AEYL'at ocm aunx &rrep EOTLV EL'Epwv eivm A.ryenn I}
orrwcrouv aA.A.wc; rrpoc; EL'Epov.

The revised definition is (8a 31-2):

... those things are relative for which to be is the same as to be
disposed relatively to something
ecrn Ta rrp6c; n ofc; To eivm nxuT6v icrn nfi rrp6c; L't rrwc; exetv.

Much unnecessary darkness has been shed on this question by the assumption, a commonplace in the ancient,
medieval and modern commentators 1 , that the former defiI 2. Ammonius, In Ar. Cat. 77.28ff., Simplicius, In Ar. Cat. I 98. I 7ff., Philoponus,
In Ar. Cat. l08.3I-109.31, Olympiodorus, In Ar. Cat. 100.4-20, Ackrill, op. cit. p. 10I
(where it is even said to be undeniable, although his own further discussion of
the passage does not exploit it.), Oehler op. cit. pp. 248ff., Zanatta op. cit.
pp. 592 ff., M.Erler, Relation. I. Antike , in Historisches Wirterbuch der Philosophie
vol. VIII (Darmstadt I992) 578-86, p. 580, and F. Morales, Relational attributes
in Aristotle, Phronesis 39 (1994), 255-75. The honourable exceptions known to
me are Porphyry, In Ar. Cat. I25.6-23, Mignucci art. cit. pp. 107-8, and F. CaujolleZaslawsky, Les relatifs dans les Categories , in P. Aubenque (ed.), Concepts et categories dans la pensee antique (Paris I980), I57-95, pp. I85-7.

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

333

nition focuses on the way things are spoken of, the latter on
the way they actually are. On this view, Aristotle's tentative
solution rests on a deliberate shift from what we may for
convenience call a de dicta to a de review of relativity 13 The
principle of cognitive symmetry will somehow be one which
follows only from the de re view of relativity. There are,
however, severe difficulties attached to this view.
If the de dicta version of relativity were to be understood in
a way which did not imply the cognitive symmetry principle,
that as far as I can see could plausibly only be either because
on this definition relativity is a purely linguistic matter, and
therefore does not necessarily map onto how things actually
are, or because, given that linguistic expressions are equivocal, some apparently relativising expressions fail to express
genuine relativities. But we have seen that, when Aristotle
asserts that e. g. some cow is not spoken of as some cow of
something (8a 17-18), that is already a metaphysical thesis,
not a report of actual linguistic usage, which can hardly
exclude expressions like some cow of some farmer .
Outside this passage, in fact, one might be forgiven for
understanding the Categories as treating the way things are
and the way they are spoken of as entirely co-extensive : to say
how_ a thing is spoken of is to give the description under
which it is proper to speak of it- proper precisely because the
description picks out the appropriate aspect of what that
thing is. To put it another way, the legomena which the categories classify (1b 25ff.) are predicates, and Aristotle is unconcerned with any distinction between linguistic and metaphysical predicates, since he assumes them to be both. Hence in
the Categories, as elsewhere in Aristotelian metaphysics, there
is simply no exploitable gap between how a thing is spoken of
and what that thing is. Indeed, even within our present
passage, just where Aristotle is supposed to be exploring the
advantages of shifting from the de dicto to the de redefinition
of relativity, he seems to have no qualms about slipping back
into the de dicta locution- at 8b 14-15,
I3. The actual terminology adopted in the medieval tradition (Aquinas.
Scotus. Occam etc.) is the horrible secundum dici and secundum esse.

J.:.J'-1:

B liv EU>n
EU)vat 14

DAVID SEDLEY

Tt(;

TWV rrp6c

Tt

wptop.vwc' XcXXEtvo IT()OC B 7tyETC.Xt wptop.vwc

Aristotle's distinction seems rather to be one between two

degrees of relativity. Let us christen them soft relativity
and hard relativity. On the original definition, which I
shall call soft relativity, F is a relative provided only that the
statement that xis F requires a completion : xis F ofy, than y,
for y, or whatever the relation might be. On the revised definition, which I call hard relativity, being F does not merely
entail some such relation, but actually consists in that relation. The revised definition is thus a stronger and narrower
one, singling out those properties which consist in a relation
and nothing more. All properties which fit the revised definition will fit the original one. But some properties which fall
under the original one will fail to satisfy the revised one, since
they will consist partly in a relation but partly also in an
internal state of their bearer.
At the beginning of chapter 7, Aristotle identifies two
groups of relatives, without at this stage explaining the difference between them. With hindsight, though, it looks as if the
first group (6a 37-b 2) - exemplified by larger and
double -are hard relatives, while the second group (6b 23) - exemplified by state (e~tc;;), disposition (lh&9ecrtc;;),
perception ( aYcr8ncrtc;;), understanding ( erncrn)[.Ln), and
position (8crtc;;) - are soft relatives 15 We may test the
distinction by choosing one item from each list.
14. Note too that at 7b 15, where the supposedly linguistic criterion still holds
sway, relatives are described as simultaneous by nature (cpucrct).
15. Ackrill (ofl. cit., p. 99) rightly wonders why etc and l>taEkcrtc are included
as relatives in this list, since if the point is simply that a state must be something's
state it threatens to follow that all non-substance items are relatives. My guess is
that his motive for including them here is to make it absolutely clear that this
second list is one of no more than soft relatives, since a state or disposition is,
above all, something internal. But why are they relatives at all? Unfortunately Top.
IV 4, 125a 33-37 does suggest that their relativity lies in their requiring a possessor,
namely the soul. In the peculiar terminology of the Categories, however, this kind
of dependence would be expressed by in >>, not of (see ch. 5, and Simplicius'
astute comment to this effect at ofJ. cit. 203.14-21). Hence- see lla 20ff.- it may

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

335

Clearly episteme (6b 3) will fit Aristotle's initial, weaker definition, which I have called soft relativity. As he explains
(6b 5), any case of epistememust be episteme of something. But,
we may now observe, episteme does not consist purely in the
relation between the understander and the understandable.
It is in addition an internal disposition of the soul 16, whose
various species Aristotle therefore classes as qualities (8b 2930, etc.). Hence episteme is a soft relative. By contrast,
double is a hard relative. Doubleness is a property which
consists purely in a relation between two correlative items,
the double one and the half one. There is no internal qualitative disposition of the double item which can in any way be
identified with its doubleness.
The classification of some other relatives as hard relatives
may look less straightforward to justify. Take slave and master
(7a 31-b 9). Being a slave does appear in Aristotle's view to
consist purely in the relation of having a master 17 Yet there is
at least one internal qualitative disposition that is entailed by
it, namely being human. 'Why does this not make slave no
more than a soft relative ? Because the intrinsic state of being
a human being can in no way be identified with slavery, in the
way that the intrinsic mental state of an understander can be
identified with their understanding. Aristotle's singular way
of putting this (7a 31-b 1) is that, with regard to being a slave,
the property of being human is merely accidental 18 That
is why we can safely conclude that slave is a hard relative.
rather be that they are relative because they are genera, requiring as differentiae
items which are external to themselves : understanding must be understanding of
something, e.g. letters, a state (of mind) must be a state regarding something, and
virtue and vice (added as relatives at 6b 16) must be differentiated into species by
reference to one's being good or bad at something. This reading would however
imply, again in line with 11a 20ff., that their species are not normally relatives,
and, if so, we would be forced to take the species of 9crtc listed at 6b 11-14 not to
be themselves relatives other than (as 11a 28-9 explains) X<XTCx yvo~;.
16. Cf. 1b 1-2, r, ErrtO"nl[LT} EV UITOXEL(.LEVCf [LEv ecrn Tij t(JUXU
17. There is no sign yet of Aristotle's later doctrine that some people are slaves
by nature, which the findings of Peter Garnsey (Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to
Augustine [Cambridge 1997}, pp. 107-28) suggest may be unique to the Politics.
18. Cf. DA 418a 20-3, 425a 26-7 for a similar use of accident.

.J.:>U

UAVIU

S~DLEY

Such, then, appears to be the distinction between two

kinds of relativity which Aristotle describes. But is it sufficient
to generate the principle of cognitive symmetry which he
builds on his revised definition? I think that it is. According
to that principle, if you know definitely one of a pair of correlatives, you must know definitely the other of the pair. Hard
relativity is evidently sufficient to ground this principle.
Indeed, as we have seen, Aristotle uses the example of double
and half to illustrate the principle. The relation in which the
one item's doubleness consists is the relation in which the
other item's halfness consists, so to know definitely that the
one item is double is the same thing as to know definitely that
the other item is half. There is no reason why the same should
not apply to master and slave. To be a master is to have a slave,
and to be a slave is to have a master. So if to know definitely
that X is a master you have to know that X is master of Y, you
must also eo ipso know that Yis the slave of X, which is to know
definitely that Yis a slave 19
What we still need to show, in order to make sense of the
passage, is that soft relativity is insufficient to generate the
principle of cognitive symmetry. Otherwise Aristotle's tentative shift to his second definition of relativity will be unmotivated.
To show that soft relativity is insufficient to generate the
principle of cognitive symmetry, we may return to the
example of episteme. It would be bizarre to deny that one can
know definitely what episteme is, e.g. a certain well-founded
species of belief. But what of its correlative, which according
to Aristotle is the episteton (7b 23ff.) ? If Aristotle were to allow
19. These are examples which, like Aristotle's at 8b 3-13, place the relative
term in the predicate position. I think we can guess why he preferred to avoid an
example which, like the head~~ one at 8b 15-19, placed the relative term in the
subject position, e.g. You can know definitely what a slave is if and only if you
know definitely what a slave is the slave of. In such cases cognitive symmetry may
well be maintained, but it is debatable whether the knowledge in question would
pass the test for being definite knowledge. To know that a slave is the slave of
a master, and vice versa, sounds indefinite. And Aristotle (see next note) is reluctant in this context to confront the question whether indefinite knowledge is a
coherent concept or not.

ARISTOTELIAN RELATIVITIES

337

that there is such a thing as knowing something indefinitelyw,

it might be possible to know indefinitely what episteme is of:
episteme is of the episteton. But there seems no way that you
could know definitely what its object is. If you try to supply
episteme with a definite object, say geometrical theorems~ the
state of mind correlative with this object is of course not episteme, but its species geometrical understanding, or simply
geometry . And Aristotle considers this and all other
species of epistemenot to be relatives at all (lla 20-36) :all episteme must be episteme of something, but geometry is not
geometry of something. Therefore episteme disobeys the prin20. Earlier on it looked as if he wanted to outlaw the concept of indefinite
knowledge altogether. (a) At 8a 37-b 7 he substituted the simple verb know for
what in the previous lines he had called know definitely, and treated its negation as<< not know in the slightest>>. This implies that knowing definitely is the only
way of knowing. (b) "When he focused at 8b 9-13 on the case of knowing that xis
F-er than whatever is less Fthan itself, his objection to calling this indefinite knowledge was not that it is not really indefinite, but that it is not really knowledge at
all, because it could turn out to be false should there prove to be nothing less F
than X. (c) At 8b I 2 he treats definite knowledge as equivalent to knowing axpt:Ow~;'
a term which combines the notions of certainty and accuracy: it would surely be
unacceptable to a Greek ear to speak of a kind of knowledge which was not
axpt:OTk. Admittedly in many cases the objection in (b) would fail, even for Aristotle's own example<< half (cf. Ackrill, ofJ. cit. p. 102, <<(OJne can know that 97 is
half some other number without knowing what that number is ), see Mignucci
art. cit. Nevertheless, one might well infer from tl1ese indications that Aristotle
considers indefinite knowledge an incoherent notion. On the other hand, that
leaves an awkwardness about the concluding portion of the argument as I have
interpreted it. Is it possible to know that a head belongs to the headed? It is hard
to see why not, and such a claim is certainly not vulnerable this time to (b) 's charge
of fallibility (which is one reason why I would resist Mignucci's suggestion, art. cit.
p. 119, of equating indefinite knowledge with mere belief, an equivalence which
in any case seems to be ruled out by 8b 9-11). But if it is possible, the knowledge
of it can only be indefinite knowledge, since the whole point of the argument is to
deny that this could be definitely known. I suspect that Aristotle has no thoughtout answer. Immediately after our passage he concludes the chapter with a remark
on the provisionality of his argument (8b 21-4, quoted below). And all that it
requires for its own purposes is our agreement on a negative point, that you
cannot know definitely that head belongs to tlte headed. Whether you can know it
indefinitely, or not at all, is a question he can safely leave to one side.

.LJL"l.V UJ

.;)CULE.Y

ciple of cognitive symmetry, and it is only by disqualifying such

items from being relatives that that principle can be rescued.
We still need to explain why the failure of episteme to obey
the principle of cognitive symmetry should depend on its
being merely a soft relative. The answer, I think, is that soft
relatives, unlike hard relatives, are characterised primarily by
an intrinsic condition, such as the mental state of the epistemon, or, in the case of aisthesis, the kind of modification
undergone by the perceiver's sense-organ. To that extent, the
soft-relative state is not merely a function of its external correlate. The former is specifiable, and therefore definitely
knowable, independently of the latter. That is why the principle of cognitive symmetry is bound to fail.
In fact, it should now be clear that the principle of cognitive symmetry was introduced precisely as a test for whether a
given relative is hard or soft. It is the symmetry between one's
knowledge of relative and correlative that guarantees that
each is nothing more than a function of the other. If on the
other hand there is even a potential cognitive asymmetry
between the relative and its (correctly designated) correlative, they can be no more than soft relatives.
After propounding his proposal for rescuing parts from a
dual categorial status, Aristotle concludes chapter 7 as follows
(8b 21-4):
It may be difficult to make a firm assertion on such questions
without frequent investigations. Nevertheless, to have raised puzzles
about each of them is not without point.

His suggestion of restricting all relativity to hard relativity

has, then, been put forward only tentatively, as a possible
solution to the aporia generated by the ambiguous categorial
status of substantial parts. He does not in fact adopt it in the
remainder of the Categories, where the first definition of relativity is implicitly invoked several times, and where, in consequence, the soft relative episteme continues to serve as a standard case of relativity21 For whatever reason, Aristotle judged
such a restriction of relativity to be too high a price to pay for
21. I Ia 24-36, b 24-35.

ARISTOTEElAN RELATMTIES

339

the elimination of relative substances. At the time of writing

the Categories, he simply had no definitive solution to the
problem posed by the categorial status of substantial parts.
I hope that I have made a sufficient case, based on Aristotle's own text,. for attributing to him the distinction
between what I have called soft and hard relativity. But now
let me confess that my reading him this way was inspired by a
much more lucid version of the same distinction, attributed
by Simplicius to the Stoics. The report comes
from his
22
commentary on Aristotle's Categories (166.15-29) :
To put what I am saying more clearly, they call relative (rrp6c n)
all things which are conditioned according to an intrinsic character but
are directed towards something else; and relatively disposed>> (rrp6c
d rrwc xmrra.) all those whose nature it is to become and cease to be a
property of something without any internal change or qualitative alteration, as well as to look towards what lies outside. Thus when something in a differentiated condition is directed towards something else,
it will only be relative : for example hexis, episteme, aisthesis. But when it
is thought of not according to its inherent differentiation but merely
according to its disposition relative to something else, it will be relatively disposed. For son, and on the right, in order to be there,
need certain external things. Hence without any internal change a
father could cease to be a father on the death of his son, and the man
on the right could cease to be on the right if his neighbour changed
position. But sweet and bitter could not alter qualitatively if their
internal power did not change too. If, then, despite being unaffected
in themselves they change because of something else's disposition relative to them, it is clear that relatively disposed things have their being
in that disposition alone and not through any differentiation.

This is, as far as I can see, exactly the distinction we have

already located in Aristotle. Note in particular the last clause,
in which, just as in Aristotle, the hard relatives are described
as having their very being in a relation. But hard relativity is
now helpfully explicated by a test simpler and more effective
than Aristotle's cognitive symmetry criterion. A relative
property is hard-relative if it is subject to what is nowadays
called Cambridge change, that is, if its bearer can acquire and
22. SVFII 403. The translation here is based on that at LS 29B.

.:>':I:V

UAVIU SEDLEY

lose it without undergoing any intrinsic alteration, simply

because something external has altered23 To some extent
Simplicius has probably cast the explanation in his own terms.
In particular, most of the examples are his own standard ones,
and the list of soft-relatives hexis, episteme and aisthesis also
closely echoes Aristotle's Categories. We cannot too readily
assutne that all of this directly reflects the Stoics' own exposition. But the actual explicit distinction between hard and soft
relativity is not Simplicius' own, nor does he elsewhere attribute any such view to Aristotle. It is therefore fairly safe to take
it to be an authentic report of a Stoic position24
What is more, the main example of soft-relatives, namely
sweet and bitter, is not drawn from Simplicius' usual repertoire, or from Aristotle's Categories 25 , and may well be
23. The term is thatofP. T. Geach, GodandtheSoul(London 1969), pp. 71-2,
who coined it to capture the view, held by a number of Cambridge philosophers,
that for a thing to change is for it to acquire or lose some predicate, whether or not
it undergoes internal alteration. Strictly, then, even intrinsic changes are
Cambridge changes. But I use the expression here - as it has come to be standardly used - as shorthand for merely Cambridge change : change which involves
acquiring or losing a predicate and nothing more.
24. Mario Mignucci, in an outstandingly thorough examination of this passage
(The Stoic notion of relatives, inJ. Barnes, M. Mignucci (ed.), MatterandMetafJhysics (Naples 1988), 129-217), expresses doubts whether, at least as described by
Simplicius, it is attributable to classical Stoicism. In partial reply, I would argue:
(a) that Plutarch ( Comm. not. 1083A-1084A) indirectly associates all four Stoic
categories with Chrysippus, and this must include the fourth of them, which is
certainly called the rrp6c Tt rrw<; EXOV (see LS 28A 6); (b) that Chrysippus' debate
with Ariston (LS 29E) contrasts the second with the fourth category in a way which
matches Simplicius' analysis well; and (c) that the Chrysippean fragment at Plut.,
St. RefJ. 1054E-F (LS 29D, with comment vol. I p. 178) also matches the fourth
category as described by Simplicius. Mignucci (ib. p. 214 with n. 80) cites a Chrysippean usage ofEXtv EVCX.VTtw<; rrp6<; ... (in Galen, PHP254.18-19) which fails to
match the Simplician account of rrp6<; Tl TrW(; EXOV. But is this an instance of rrp6<;
n rrw<; EXOV ? As Mignucci himself observes in the same article, the Stoics probably
did not consider pairs of contraries to be interrelated as relatives- in which case
a fortiori they did not call them relatively disposed to each other.
25. I do not count Cat. 8a 5-6, where sweet and bitter are mentioned in the
context of relativity, but not as being themselves relatives (or else body, listed
alongside them, would also have to be a relative).

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

341

authentic. This pair illustrates soft relativity very nicely. To be

sweet is to be sweet for one or more perceivers. As was well
established by an epistemological tradition stretching back at
least to Democritus, what is sweet for one perceiver may well
be bitter for another. To that extent, sweet is a relative term.
But sweetness does not merely consist in the relation between
perceiver and percept. It is also, and primarily, a physical
condition of the item to which it belongs.
Relative disposition is the fourth in the Stoics' scheme
of four categories (or, perhaps more correctly, genera of
being). There is good reason to think that the school had its
own internal motivations for exploiting the concept. In particular, Chrysippus used it to characterise a view of virtue which
he wished to combat. This was the thesis of Ariston of Chios
that virtue is in reality a unitary state of mind, variously called
courage, justice, etc., merely according to the external
circumstances : courage when it is confronted by danger,
justice when confronted by matters involving apportionment,
and so on. Chrysippus took this thesis to mean that the four
virtues are related as different relative dispositions 26 ,
without each having its own intrinsic character; and he set
out to refute the view by arguing that they in fact belong not
to the fourth category, relative disposition, but to the second
category, quality27
26. Mignucci, art. cit. (n. 24), pp. 210ff., argues that, since the intrinsic state of
mind in question is knowledge, and since knowledge is according to Simplicius'
report a mere rrp6<; n not a rrp6c Tt rrw<; EXOV, Ariston's view could not be represented as making the virtues rrp6<; Tt rrw<; EXOVTa in the sense reported by Simplicius. My reply would be that knowledge is indeed a (relative, no doubt) quality, i.e.
a member of the second category, but that it is its supposed species or parts, i.e.
courage, justice etc., that are represented as being in the fourth category.
Courage, justice etc. do then in a way involve an intrinsic disposition, namely
knowledge. But it is not this disposition that differentiates them as courage,justice
etc. Qust as being a human being does not differentiate someone as a slave, see
above p. 335-336) : that is done purely by an external relation in which the knowledge stands. I see nothing to stop either the Stoic account reported by Simplicius
or Aristotle's notion of hard relativity fitting such a case.
27. Both Simplicius' account and Chrysippus' actual usage of his fourth category allow hard relativity to be a one-way relation (Simplicius' final sentence does

342

DAVID SEDLEY

Al<..l::> 1 u 1 ~Llf\J.'\J l<....I;,Lf\.11 v 111C,:)

J-:rJ

However, my concern here is not to pursue the place of

hard relativity in Stoicism. It is to ask how this Stoic concept
is related to what we have met in Aristotle. Even though
Simplicius, our source, does not notice it, there is surely some
non-accidental connexion. The Stoic term for hard relativity
is rrp6c; Tt rrwc; xov, relatively disposed, and items of this
kind are said to have their being in their relative disposition.
Aristotle describes hard relatives as those things whose being
is identical with their being relatively disposed - ofc; TO t::Ivoa
T<XtJT6v crn Tif> rrp6c; Tt rrwc; EXtv. The overlap of terminology is
striking. But there is also a difference. In Stoic usage, the
actual expression rrp6c; Tt rrwc; xov, has a technical sense, such
as already to contain the notion of hard relativity. That is no
doubt because disposed , rrwc; xov, the third Stoic category, already signifies a further comparatively transient state
of the underlying qualified item, in the way that, for example,
a fist is a hand rrwc; xov 28 Hence a relative disposition, as
distinct from a relative quality like sweet, is a volatile or accidental relativity, and the term thus lends itself well to what I
have described as hard relativity. But in Aristotle's usage the
notion of hard relativity has to be brought out more explicitly, by specifying each time that such items have their very
being in their relative disposition.
One possible explanation of this difference might be that
the Stoics derived their notion from Aristotle, and that their
condensed expression was merely a convenient shorthand for

his. But there are reasons for hesitating over so simple an

answer29 For one thing, we face the thorny problem of how
far Aristotle's school treatises were even available to the early
Stoics, and, if available, how far actually read30 I for one
strongly believe that the Categories, at least, really was lost until
the mid first century BC, when it suddenly and spectacular!(
3
burst onto the scene, attracting a spate of commentaries
But even if we disregard that problem, it remains implausible
that the extremely cryptic passage in the Categories, which if
I am right was misunderstood by every surviving ancient
commentator, was nevertheless enough to supply the Stoics
with the idea and even the terminology of hard relativity. It
remains probable that the Stoics were well acquainted with at
least some of Aristotle's published dialogues; but if the terminological distinction between hard and soft relativity rarely
surfaces even in the highly technical school treatises, it is a
fmtiori unlikely that it was available from his more popular
works.
Before proceeding with this question, it is important to
check on the few occurrences of rrp6c; Tt rrwc; EXt\J in Aristotle's other surviving works. In Nicomachean Ethics I 12
(II 01 b 1Off.), using technical categorial language, he notes
that a thing is praiseworthy (a) because of some intrinsic
quality, (b) by reference to an external standard. The latter is
expressed by saying that the thing is praised Tif> rrp6c; Tt rrwc;
EXtv, because of its disposition relative to something
(II 01 a 13) , and later specified as EX tv rrwc; rrpoc; &.ycx86v Tt xcxt

assume that a two-way relative disposition is at issue, but his formal account of the
criterion of hard relativity does not require it): that a virtuous state of mind
should be specifically courage depends wholly on the presence of external
danger, but the danger can hardly be said to depend on the presence of courage.
TI1is may look like a difference from Aristotle, who treats hard relativity as reciprocal, and bases his cognitive symmetry principle on just that thesis. But if it is a
difference there is no necessity to conclude that it is a difference in their notions
of hard relativity. Aristotle's reciprocity rule is a rule about relativity in general
(Cat. 6b 28ff.). It is because he tentatively equates relativity with hard relativity that
he expects the same reciprocity rule to apply to the latter as well. It need not
follow that the notion of hard relativity which he adopted was already defined as
a reciprocal relation.
28. Sextus Empiricus, PHil 81.

29. Mignucci (art. cit. [n. 24 above]), pp. 166-8, also argues against a Stoic
dependence on Aristotle here. His arguments, however, are based largely on a
doubt, which I do not share, as to whether the Aristotelian and Stoic concepts are
sufficiently similar.
30. T11is issue has been very powerfully explored by F.H. Sandbach, Aristotle
and the Stoics (Cambridge 1985).
31. Although the Categories, along with the De interpretatione, appears in two
versions of a list of Aristotelian works held to derive from a late third-century BC
source (one in Diogenes Laertius, see V 26, the other in Hesychius), it is generally
agreed that they are a later interpolation there: seeP. Moraux, Les Listes anciennes
des ouvrages d'Aristote (Louvain 1951), pp. 131, 186-90, 313, I. During, Aristotle in
the Ancient Biograj1hical Tradition (Goteborg 1957), pp. 69, 90.

un.v llJ .:>CULCI

crrrouBcxTov, being disposed relatively to something good and

virtuous (1101a 17-18). His point is that strictly speaking we
should not praise the gods, or happiness, because their
perfection means that there is no external standard suitable
for referring them to. To make best sense of the argument,
we should take Aristotle to intend a firm separation between
(a) the intrinsic qualities and (b) the external relation, which
means that (b) should not include any qualities, like knowledge, which happen also to be relative. There is therefore
good reason to suppose that Aristotle is here relying on the
refinement introduced in Categories 7 and choosing the terminology of relative disposition consciously in order to indicate hard relativity. Significantly, then, we have here evidence
that the condensed expression, rrp6<; Tt IT&.>{; exetV, without the
fuller explication found in the Categories, is known to Aristotle
as a technical designation of hard relativitf2
Elsewhere, though, Aristotle prefers the longer and more
explicit formula. Physics VII 3 (246b 3-20) argues that bodily
and n1ental excellences and defects are not true alloioseis
because they have their being in relative disposition (ecrn TCfl
rrp6c Tt rrwc xetv, 246b 8), and although the argument is difficult the concept itself is clear enough. More helpfully, the
language of Categories 7 is accurately replicated in two
passages of Topics VI. In VI 4 he concedes an exception to the
rule that the definiens must use terms prior to those in the
definiendum, remarking ( 142a 26-31):
It must not go unnoticed that there are some things which it may
not be possible to define in any other way - for example, to define
double without half, and everything that is in itself relative33 For all
such things, their being is the same as being disposed relatively to
something ( nxinov To Eivm T<{} rrp6c T rrwc EXELV), so that it is impossible
32. It actually seems probable to me that also in our current passage, at Cat.
8b 1-3, Aristotle intends the condensed expression rrwc EXEtv rrp6c ... in the same
technical sense. But since the sentence already rests on the supposition that the
revised definition has been adopted, it cannot be proved that he is not using this
expression merely in the generic sense be relative to ... >>
33. One might have thought that this reference to everything that is xo:8'
miT6 relative did not cover the entire relativity category, and was intended

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

345

to know the one without the other. Hence the one must be included
in the definition of the other.

Here, and again in a another very similarly worded passage

of the same book (VI 8, 146a 36-b 4), he accurately either
echoes or anticipates the Categories passage, making it clear,
moreover, that on his current view he endorses the modification, proposed only tentatively at the end of the Categories
passage, of adopting the revised definition of relativitf 4
However, such a restriction of relativity to hard relativity
can be found elsewhere too, notably in Metaphysics N 1
(1088a 29-35), where he makes it a hallmark of all relatives
that they are subject to Cambridge change. And, significantly,
this time he expresses the point without any reference whatsoever to rrp6c Tt rrwc exetv. Nor does the expression occur in
his formal account of relativity in Metaphysics fl 15, an account
as accommodating to soft relativity as the first part of Categories chapter 7 is.
We may conclude that (i) Aristotle wavers, sometimes
consciously, between a hard and a soft conception of relativity; (ii) he sometimes uses the vocabulary of rrp6c TC rrwc exetv
to help bring out the notion of hard relativity; but (iii) he
does not behave as if this were any integral part of his own
terminology- so much so that, where he uses it to emphasise
the hardness of the relativity, in every case but one he
expands it into the more self-explanatory description of hard
relatives as those things whose very being is identical with
their rrp6c Tt rrwc xetv.

to mark off the hard relatives within it. But actually, as for instance 146a 36-7
makes clear, xo:e' m1T6 relative merely contrasts with relative xo:nx To y8voc ,
where, for example, geometry satisfies the latter description but not the former.
The TofJ. VI 8 passage makes it unambiguous that he is speaking of all relatives, not
a subset of them.
34. One sign that this may predate the Categories is that in the Tbp. VI 8 passage
Aristotle asserts that all relativity is hard relativity without yet letting this narrow
the range of items included as relative : his two examples of relatives are in fact
episteme (correlated with the episteton) and boulesis (correlated with the good).

347

DAVID SEDLEY

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

If Aristotle occasionally invokes this concept, but without

treating it as integral to his own vocabulary, we must ask
where he is getting it from. It may be significant that his clearest endorsement of the dictum that all relatives are things
whose being is the same as their being disposed relatively to
something >> is in the Topics, a work replete with echoes of the
Academy, where it may well have been written 35 Might the
solution then not be that the rrp6c; Tt rrwc; exov is a concept
stemming from the early Academy?
There is in fact some evidence favouring an Academic
origin, although I have never seen it cited to this effect36 In
commenting on Categories chapter 8, Simplicius discusses
various views as to how things come to possess qualities. Here
(217.8ff.), as occasionally elsewhere (209.10-14, 212.7-11,
369.19-24), he names the Academics as proponents of the
thesis that qualities are havable , xnx. He explains that
what this amounted to for them was that Forms (eYBn) are
had by the things which they characterise (217.12-13), and
in due course he criticises them (217.25-32) for having
spoken of the Forms in which things participate as had yet
also as separated (xwptcrnl), complaining that they never said
what this incoherent-looking metaphysical relation was
supposed to amount to. Their mistake, in his view, was to treat
immanent forms, which can reasonably be said to be had,
as if they were no different from transcendent Forms (217.2932). Whoever these Academics are, then, so far they certainly
sound like Platonists, albeit rather inferior ones in Simplicius' eyes.
Now these Academics also appear to have used the terminology of rrp6c; Tt rrwc; exov. According to Simplicius' report
(217.13-25), they allowed what can be had to range from
fixed states like wisdom , via easily terminated dispositions

sitting, to relatively disposed changes, rrp6c; Tt rrwc;

[qoucrac; xtvncretc; (217.18-19, cf. 217.23). He does not pause to
:.~plain what they meant by this last expression. But he makes
fairly clear that it was their own expression, since he adds
at in their classification (cf. TexvoA.oya, 217.24-5), for the
of clarity, they chose to place all the items in this range
......,rt.o.r the generic term disposed, TrW(; EXOVT<X (217.19-21).
_, ____ he indicates that this term was suitable because at an
e,_"(treme the class in question included even the relatively
(lisposed , rrp6c; TL rrwc; exovTa. At least some of these Acade:_'tnics, he explains, classed the relatively disposed as a species
of the disposed (217.21-3). Importantly, the entire tenor of
-.,>~he passage suggests that the term rrpoc; Tt TrW(; EXOVT<X was Used
~y them in its specific sense to designate what I have been
~dlling hard relativity. I say this because they nominate the
np6c; TL rrwc; exovTa as the extreme case of unstable properties,
\\fhereas one would expect many soft relative items, like knowledge or sweetness, to be stable.
"Who were these Academics, who used both a Platonic
metaphysics and the terminology of the rrpoc; Tt TrW(; EXOV in
the technical sense familiar to us from Stoicism ? They cannot
plausibly be identified with members of the Hellenistic New
Academy, from Arcesilaus to Philo of Larissa. In principle the
reference could be to (a) the early Academy, from Speusippus to Polemo, (b) followers of Antioch us of Ascalon, or
(c) followers or associates of Eudorus. I would eliminate the
circle of Antiochus, however, since although he formally
approved of Platonic Forms 37 , he seems to have had very little
interest in metaphysics. It is much likelier that we should look
to Eudorus, the mid first-century BC author of a commentary
on the Categories which Simplicius sornetimes cites, once
calling him Eudorus the Academic. However, Eudorus is
regularly cited by Simplicius in the present tense and by
name, whereas here the talk is of unnamed Acadetnics,
falling into at least two sub-groups (217.21-5), and reported

346

35. Michael Frede (Categories in Aristotle, in his Essays in Ancient Philosophy

(Minneapolis 1987), 29-48) has even argued that the categories doctrine in the
TofJics is closer to the theory's origins in Platonic dialectic than the version in the
Categories itself.
36. Not even in the important section Die Umbildung der Kategorien und
Prinzipienlehre in H.:J. Kramer, Platonismus und hellenistische Philosophie (Berlin
1971), pp. 75-107.

37. This is, I think, conclusively demonstrated by P.L. Donini, Testi e

commenti, manuali e insegnamento : la forma sistematica e i metodi della filosofia.in eta postellenistica , ANRWII 36.7, 1994, pp. 5028-9 n. 3, 5038-9, n. 31.

348

DAVID

SEDL~Y

largely in the past tense, as if he knows of them only indirectly. My best guess is that these are fellow Academics whom
the very independent-minded Eudorus chose to criticise in
his Categories commentary. Probably, as is typical of in-school
polemic, he did not deign to name them. If so, Simplicius in
his turn will be relying on Eudorus' report, and will know no
more about them than Eudorus has chosen to vouchsafe.
If we follow this hypothesis, how should we date them? It
is very hard to find room in the history of the first-century BC
Academy for Platonist Academics earlier than Eudorus
himself. Eudorus is, after the Academy's long sceptical phase,
the very first Platonist we hear of with a recognisably Platoni38
sing metaphysics , and the only one before Plutarch to call
himself an Academic. It is easier to suppose that Eudorus was
drawing his material from the Academy's early Platonist
phase, which he must in some sense have seen himself as resuming.
If so, we have to ask whether a categorial doctrine of this
kind is likely to have been developed in the early Academy.
The answer is emphatically yes. There is no doubt that there
were strong categorial interests in the fourth-century
Academy. Xenocrates is said to have adopted a version of the
simple two-category scheme, absolute (xae' auTo) and
relative>> (rrp6c; Tt) bequeathed by Plato himself 39 , and
Hermodorus to have produced his own more elaborate classification of relatives 40 Hermodorus' scheme, as reported,
does not itself include soft and hard relativity. Nevertheless,
the categorial interests, the size and the doctrinal diversity of
38. Harold Tarrant (Scepticism or Platonism ? TI~e Philosophy of the Fourth Academy
(Cambridge 1985) has sought to maximise the Platonist leanings of Philo of
Larissa, who may well have been Eudorus' own Academic teacher, and does go so
far as to offer Philo at least an epistemological use of Platonic Forms ; but the
proposal is highly speculative.
39. Cf. Plato, Sph. 255c-d, Tizt. 160b, Phlb. 5lc; and for a probably Peripatetic
attribution to Plato of the formal two-category scheme, see DL II 108-9.
40. Simplicius In Ar. Phys. 247.30ff. = Hermodorus fr. 7 Isnardi. For a judicious
assessment of the evidence for relativity in the Academy, see Gail Fine, On Ideas
(Oxford 1993), pp. 176-82.

ARISTOTELIAN RELATMTIES

349

early Academy combine to make it a thoroughly suitable

'::1'1\lvule for the unnamed Academics reported by Simplicius.
Nor is it hard to speculate why the early Academy should
the place where the notion of hard relativity was first engirnPPr~d. Any Academics who adopted the Platonic two-catescheme were obliged to give the rrp6c n category a very
content. In fact, according to Simplicius the circle of
ocrates made this content broad enough to include all
non-substances, i. e. accidental properties, corresponding to
all nine of Aristotle's non-substance categories41 This will
have posed a problem for any Academic who wanted to single
out relativity in its narrower sense, the kind discussed for
example by Plato at Theaetetus 154-155. It would hardly be
surprising if exactly these circumstances gave rise to a new
term, designating those highly volatile properties which
consist in a relation and nothing more.
The subsequent history of category theory tends to
confirm this conjecture. Outside the Peripatos, the two-category scheme was the dominant one throughout the Hellenistic age42 , being adopted by the Epicureans43 , the New
Academics44 , the Pyrrhonists45 , and even the Stoics. (As we
saw earlier, the fourfold Stoic scheme dubbed a theory of
categories>> by modern scholarship actually co-existed with
the familiar two-category scheme and cut across it, with n:p6c;
rl rrwc; xov used to single out hard relativity from within the
soft-relative rrp6c Tt category.) Then in the mid first century
BC Aristotle's Categories made its sudden and spectacular
reappearance. During the remainder of the first century BC
and perhaps a little after, at least two of those who adopted a
. multi-category scheme - the Academic Eudorus and the
41. Simplicius, In Ar. Cat. 63.21-6.
42. For a comprehensive survey, see H.J. Kramer, op. cit., pp. 75-107.
43. Polystratus, De contemptu XXI-XXVIII ; cf. P.Oxy. 3658.
44. Polystratus, loc. cit.
45. Attributed very explicitly by Gellius XI 5.7-8; and the usage certainly goes
back to Aenesidemus' 8th trope (Sextus Empiricus, PHI 135-40). See also Anon.
In Plat. Tht. LXIII lff.

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DAVID SEDLEY

ARISTOTELIAN RELATIVITIES

Peripatetic Andronicus 46 - used it alongside some version or

other of the two-category scheme, rather than simply jettisoning this latter in favour of the former. It is highly significant,
then, that during this period the expression rrpo<; T( rrw<; xov
was kept distinct from the simple rrpo<; T(, and used to designate Aristotle's category of relativity47 It was only thereafter,
when the dyadic scheme disappeared from view, that the two
expressions seem to have become synonymous, presumably
because there was no longer a broad use of the term rrpo<; Tt
from which narrow Aristotelian relativity needed to be kept
distinct48 This story confirms the impression that it was the
dominance of the early Academic two-category scheme of
xa9' auTo and rrpo<; Tt that brought into the world, and kept
alive for several centuries, the use of the narrower term rrp6c
Tt rrw<; xov to designate hard relativity. It is Aristotle's usual
tendency to shun the two-category scheme that explains why
he for the most part feels no need for the term rrpo<; T( rrwc
To return to Simplicius' anonymous Academics, the
doctrine attributed to them has obvious affinities with what
we know of Stoic metaphysics. But it also differs in significant
ways - not just in being combined with a theory of transcendent Forms, but also in being prepared to treat the relatively disposed as a part of the disposed, where the Stoics
list these as separate and co-ordinate categories. It is easy to
suppose that this Academic doctrine, rather than being one
taken over from the Stoic scheme of categories, ~tself lies in

the background to Stoicism, which in its turn will have

ually adapted it to its own needs. We should never lose
sight of the fact that Zeno, the founding Stoic, was himself
trained in the Academy at the end of the fourth century49 It
is worth noting, in addition, that the categorial scheme of
these anonymous Academics includes not only the disposed
and the relatively disposed, but also the qualified (rrowv,
217.20-5) ; and immanent qualities (rrotoTT}Te<;) played a
central role in the physics of the early Academy, as reported
to us by Antioch us5.
This hypothesis of an early Academic origin for the rrp6<; TL
n{f}c xov gains strong support from my argument in the first
part of this paper, where we saw that Aristotle, probably still
writing as a member of the Academy, was already familiar with
the same technical concept. I have tried to explain why he
never fully integrated it into his own terminology. And it is
precisely that fact that makes his allusions to the concept such
important evidence for contemporary work in the Academy.
Finally, it deserves notice that even Aristotle's first definition of relativity in Categories chapter 7 has a clear Academic
origin. Relatives are defined there as those things which,
(( whatevet things they themselves are (a:UTCx arrep ECJTL\J) ' are
said to be~ other things ... This recognisably echoes the
terms in which Plato had formally explicated his notion of
relativity at Sophist 255d: other is itself relative because it
is a necessary characteristic of it to be the thing that it is
(Toilro on:ep ECJTLV) of (or "than") another thing (eTepou) 51

46. For Andronicus see Simplicius, In Ar. Cat. 63.22-4, 134.5-7; for Eudorus, ib.
174.14-16,206.10. The same practice is found in Anon. In Plat. Tht. (LXVIII 1-15),
who is probably datable to this same period.
47. This practice was adopted by the early Peripatetic commentator Boethus
(ib. 163.16-17, 202.1ff.), who actually wrote a book on the rrp6(;' nand the rrp6(;' d
TT<U(; itxov ; by Ariston of Alexandria ( ib. 202.lff.); and in the Categories of ps.Archytas (see esp. p. 28 Thesleff, where there are clear signs that it is meant to
designa~e hard relativity).
48. This eventual fusion is apparent not only in the many Platonist commentators on the Categories, but even in the 2nd~century AD Stoic Hierocles, who
casually uses a version of rrp6(;' r 7tcu(;' itxetv to express the undoubtedly soft-relative oiheiosis relation (El. Eth. li 7-9).

49. Mignucd, art. cit. (n. 24), pp. 197-8, makes some important further suggestions about the Academic background to Stoic relativity theory.
50. Cicero, Ac. I 24-5, 27-8. There is no good reason to take any of this passage
to be a mere retrojection by Antiochus of Stoic thought onto the early Academy:
much of it, including the precise use made of quality, is un-Stoic, even though
it is easy to see in it the antecedents of Stoicism. I argue this briefly in Lucretius
and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge 1998), pp. 75-8, and fully in
~The origins of stoic god~~, in D. Frede, A. Laks (ed.), Traditions of Theology
(Leiden, forthcoming).
51. Cf. Smp. 199e, a8eA.<f>6(;', o:1ho roue Brrep F-crrv, F-crr nvo(;' &5eA.<j>o(;' 1) ou;
The Platonic derivation was obvious to the early Peripatetic commentator Boethus
(Simpl., In Ar. Cat. 159.12-22, cf. Porph., In Ar. Cat. 111.27-9), and was disregarded

xov.

351

352

DAVID SEDLEY

That Aristotle's aporetic discussion of relativity in Categories

chapter 7 reflects debate within the Platonist school is once
again confirmed.

* *
It is an honour to be able to present the above study as part of a
thoroughly merited tribute to Jacques Brunschwig. His seminal
writings on ancient philosophy have always served me as both a
model and an inspiration. Quite apart from his ground-breaking
studies of Aristotle, his La thiorie stoi'cienne du genre supreme et
l 'ontologie platoniciennrl2 magnificently illuminates the Platonic
background to Stoic metaphysics. I have no right to assume that he
will agree with my own speculations in the same general area, but I
hope he will take them, as they are intended, as a further exploratory
journey down paths he has done more than anybody to open up53

by most later commentators only because they thought that the emphasis in Aristotle's first definition is on being spoken of,, as opposed to actually being,,,
while the SofJhist formulation is in terms of being: see Simpl., lac. cit. As a matter
of fact, however, Plato's own account of relativity switches indifferently between
being spoken of>> (255c 13) and being >> (255d 7), just as Aristotle's does !
52. InJ. Barnes, M. Mignucci (ed.), MatterandMetafJhysics (Naples 1988), 19127; English translation in J. Brunschwig, PafJers in Hellenistic Philosophy
(Cambridge 1994), 92-157.
53. TI1is paper started life as an oral presentation at the conference on F.H.
Sandbach's book Aristotle and the Stoics, held at Cambridge in May 1986. I am
grateful to a number of participants for criticisms which helped me in writing it
up, and I can only apologise that it took me ten years to get round to doing so.
The present version was written for an October 1996 seminar at the Institute of
Classical Studies in London, and the first part was also presented at the Moral
Sciences Club at Cambridge in March 1997, at the University of Bologna in March
1997, and to a seminar on the Categories at Cambridge in May 1997. My thanks for
invaluable comments received on all these occasions, and also to Barrie Fleet,
Luca Caffaro and Chiara Palu for further comments and help. An Italian version
appeared under the title Relativita aristoteliche >>in Dianoia2 (1997), 11-25 and
3 (1998), 11-23.

La physique de la sensation aristotelicienne

selon Theophraste (Physique, livre 5) *
ANDRE LAKs

Un debat, chez les interpretes anglo-saxons, oppose depuis

uncertain temps ceux qui pensent, avec R. Sorabji, que l'acte
perceptif, pour Aristote, ne va pas sans une alteration physiologique de l'organe sensoriel (ce qui ne signifie pas qu'elle s'y
reduise), a d'autres, qui comme M. Burnyeat soutiennent au
contraire que, ne supposant aucun processus materiel, il
releve d' une physique des formes pures >> 1 La premiere
interpretation s'appuie sur une serie d'affirmations, dans le
De anima d' Aristote, selon lesquelles 1' organe sensoriel re~oit
les formes sensibles, qu'il est affecte par elles, ou encore que
l'organe des sens, d'abord dissemblable a l'objet sensible,
devient tel que lui et est potentiellement ce que ce dernier est
en acte. A cette lecture que 1' on pourrait qualifier de litterale 2 ,
Une premiere version de ce texte a ete presentee en Fevrier 1998 dans le
cadre du seminaire de Roshdi Rashed (CNRS, URA 1085).J'ai grandement benefide de la discussion qui a suivi, et en particulier des remarques de Gerard Simon.
Je remercie aussi Myles Burnyeat pour les inflexions que sa lecture du texte m'a
permis d'introduire.
I. Cette derniere formule est de Burnyeat 1996, 163. La position de
M. Burnyeat n'a longtemps ete connue qu'a travers une version preliminaire de
ce texte (cf. Sorabji 1992, 210). La position de R. Sorabji, enoncee dans Sorabji
1974, est reprise a quelques nuances pres (cf. Sorabji 1992, 223) et developpee
dans Sorabji 1991 et 1992: Quandje vois une scene coloree, Ia gelee demon
oeil prend des taches colorees dont la couleur, les formes et les positions correspondent a cette scene)} (Sorabji 1991, 228; cf. Sorabji 1992, 209s.).
2. Sorabji 1992, 213 (a propos de 419a 15-16): In other words, it involves a
literal coloration of the organ of sight.