Aristotle's Categories: The Arabic Reception

Tracing the Arabic reception of Aristotle’s Categories entails charting the history of a foundational philosophical work across three continents, from Spain to India, over a span of at least ten centuries (9th–19th c.). This chapter offers an overview of the most significant phases of this reception. The first section examines the Arabic translations of the Categories and related Greek commentaries realized between the 9th and the 10th centuries, drawing on manuscript and bio-bibliographical sources. The second section delves into the development of an Arabic scholarly reflection on the Categories between the 9th and 11th centuries and the formation of a philosophical discourse surrounding a selection of key issues that would shape the subsequent reception of the treatise. Central among these key issues is the question of the scope of the Categories and its disciplinary classification. The third section presents Avicenna’s (d. 1037) novel ontological interpretation of the Categories and the resulting repositioning of the treatise within metaphysics. The fourth section investigates the broader impact of Avicenna’s reassessment of the place of the treatise in the post-Avicennian tradition (12th-14th c.). Finally, the fifth section presents the ‘traditionalist’ interpretations of the Categories that emerged in response to the mainstream consensus on the ontological reading of the treatise established by the post-Avicennian tradition (12th-18th c.).