Aquinas is not alone in thinking that there is a close connection between onto-
logical categories and senses of“being.”^31 The popularity of the idea that there is this
close connection probably stems from the influence of Aristotle, who seems to
endorse it as well:
Butfirstly, if“being”has many senses (for it means sometimes substance, sometimes quality,
sometimes quantity, and at other times the other categories), what sort of one are all the
things that are, if non-being is to be supposed not to be?
[MetaphysicsXIV.2, 1089a7–14 (Aristotle 1984b: 1721)]
In this passage, Aristotle appears to assert that the various senses of (per se)“being”
correspond to ontological categories.^32 In hisOn the Several Senses of Being in
Aristotle,Brentano (1981a: 58) defends several theses about Aristotle’s views on
being, the second of which is that
The Categories are several senses of being [on] which is asserted of them analogically
(kat analgoian).
Moreover, these categories are the highest univocal concepts of being, on Brentano’s
(1981a: 66) reading of Aristotle. And even in 1916, decades after Brentano’s sym-
pathy with Aristotle’s metaphysics had diminished, Brentano (1981b: 30–1) main-
tained that“Aristotle also says that there are as many different senses of being as
there are categories.”
Moreover, some philosophers explicitly endorse a strong connection between
modes of being and Aristotle’s categories. For example, consider the remark by
Edith Stein (2002: 126) that
in theMetaphysicsthecategoriesprimarily denote modes of being and genera of beings.^33
Contemporary interpreters of Aristotle who attribute to him the view that there are
modes of being to which Aristotle’s categories correspond include Witt (1989: 41–4),
Shields (1999), Ward (2008: 108–31), and Loux (2012: 23–4).^34
(^31) The connection between senses of“being”and ontological categories was not uniformly maintained.
As Bolyard (2013: 87) points out, Scotus held that“being”is univocal and yet accepted that there are
different ontological categories of things. Also note that the even up into the twentieth century, the
connection between categories and modes of being was maintained; see, e.g., Simons (2012b: 132) for an
attribution of this view to Roman Ingarden. 32
Aristotle seems to recognize other senses of“being”besides those that correspond to the categories;
these senses are sometimes called being in the sense of being true, accidental being, and potential being.
Arguably, thefirst two of these three senses are not fundamental existential/quantificational senses of
“being,”although the actual/potential distinction might correspond to one. (Recall that the view defended
here is that categories are ways of being, and that ways of being correspond tofundamentalquantificational
senses of“being”). See Marx (1977: 18), Galluzzo (2013: 35–8), and Hintikka (1986) for a comprehensive
discussion of interpretations of Aristotle 33 ’s views on being, senses of“being,”and the categories.
34 See also Stein (2009: 89, 92).
Note that Shields (1999: ch. 9) argues that Aristotle’s arguments for a plurality of modes of being are
unsound, and that there were reasons available to Aristotle for rejecting the claim that there are modes of
being. Ward (2008: section 4.4) is more sympathetic to Aristotle’s position. We’ll examine their views more