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Full Idea
'Man', and every generic term, denotes not an individual substance but a quality or relation or mode or something of the kind.
Gist of Idea
Generic terms like 'man' are not substances, but qualities, relations, modes or some such thing
Source
Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 179a01)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Sophistical Refutations, On the Cosmos etc (III)', ed/tr. Forster,E.S. /Furley,D.J. [Harvard Loeb 1955], p.117
A Reaction
This is Aristotle's denial that species constitutes the essence of anything. I take 'man' to be a categorisation of individuals, and is ontologically nothing at all in its own right.
| 2675 | Reasoning is a way of making statements which makes them lead on to other statements [Aristotle] |
| 2676 | Didactic argument starts from the principles of the subject, not from the opinions of the learner [Aristotle] |
| 2677 | Dialectic aims to start from generally accepted opinions, and lead to a contradiction [Aristotle] |
| 2674 | Competitive argument aims at refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism or repetition [Aristotle] |
| 16967 | 'Are Coriscus and Callias at home?' sounds like a single question, but it isn't [Aristotle] |
| 16149 | Generic terms like 'man' are not substances, but qualities, relations, modes or some such thing [Aristotle] |
| 11840 | Only if two things are identical do they have the same attributes [Aristotle] |