Accidental Beings in Aristotle’s Ontology

Abstract

Along with substances and their properties, Aristotle includes in his ontology such curious entities as the pale man, and seated Socrates,, entities he holds to be intermediate between and hence distinct from both the properties (pallor, being seated) and substances (man, Socrates) of which they are composed. These “accidental beings” or “kooky objects,” as they have been called, have been the cause of perplexity or even dismay in many of Aristotle’s readers. Following the lead of Gareth Matthews, among others, I investigate the role of accidental beings in Aristotle’s thought in hopes of making them seem a little less strange. I contend that these entities make their first appearance in Aristotle’s corpus not in the Physics, and Metaphysics, (where their presence has long been noted) but as the non-substantial particulars of the (presumably earlier) Categories,. I argue that this identification of accidental beings with non-substantial particulars helps to resolve a long-standing dispute about the nature of the particulars in the non-substance categories. Finally, I propose that the identity conditions of accidental beings suggest that they are best thought of as states or events—the particular states of (or particular events involving) particular substances. An accidental being thus owes its particularity to the particular substance with which it coincides, not to the (universal) property that is one of its constituents.

I am grateful to David Keyt for graciously inviting me to contribute this essay to the present volume. David was the Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington when I was hired there in 1973, and he has remained my treasured colleague ever since. During these nearly forty years, we have read and commented on one another’s work, and spent one delightful summer co-authoring a paper.

An earlier version of this essay was presented at the April 2012 meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association as part of a special memorial session celebrating the work of Gareth B. Matthews. Gary and I were friends and colleagues for over forty years, and my debts to him, both personal and intellectual, are enormous. His influence will be evident throughout this essay; I dedicate it to his memory.