Stoic categories

The term Stoic categories refers to Stoic ideas regarding categories of being: the most fundamental classes of being for all things. The Stoics believed there were four categories (substance, quality, disposition, relative disposition) which were the ultimate divisions. Since we do not now possess even a single complete work by Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes or Chrysippus what we do know must be pieced together from a number of sources: doxographies and the works of other philosophers who discuss the Stoics for their own purposes.

The present information comes from Plotinus and Simplicius, with additional evidence from Plutarch of Chaeronea and Sextus Empiricus. According to both Plotinus and Simplicius there were four Stoic categories, to wit:

A simple example of the Stoic categories in use is provided by Jacques Brunschwig:

I am a certain lump of matter, and thereby a substance, an existent something (and thus far that is all); I am a man, and this individual man that I am, and thereby qualified by a common quality and a peculiar one; I am sitting or standing, disposed in a certain way; I am the father of my children, the fellow citizen of my fellow citizens, disposed in a certain way in relation to something else.

Stoicism, like Aristotelianism is derived from Platonic and Socratic traditions. The Stoics held that all being (ὄντα) — though not all things (τινά) — are corporeal. They accepted the distinction between concrete bodies and abstract ones, but rejected Aristotle's teaching that purely incorporeal being exists. Thus, they accepted Anaxagoras' idea (as did Aristotle) that if an object is hot, it is because some part of a universal heat body had entered the object. But, unlike Aristotle, they extended the idea to cover all accidents. Thus if an object is red, it would be because some part of a universal red body had entered the object.

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