There is a danger in talking about the ten categories or even the division between substance and accident or act and potency. It gives the impression that there are ten things or two things while simply speaking there aren’t. If there are two oranges on the table and you ask someone how many things there are, the right answer is “two”, not “twenty” (ten categories apiece!*) or “four” (two instances of substance and accidents!) Being is not something, pace Suarez, that we conceive in a single thought that contains God and creation, substance and accident, act and potency.
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*I said ten apiece for simplicity. Strictly, only human beings can have the tenth category “to have”.
Bunthorne said,
December 21, 2008 at 9:17 am
About the footnote: What do you make of animals like the hermit crab, which seem to have something very much like a habitus, i.e. a possession which is not part of them but which they carry around and use like a human belonging?
a thomist said,
December 22, 2008 at 11:18 am
I commented on this yesterday, but it didn’t post.
I view the crab shell as a kind of shelter, and shelter doesn’t rise to the level of habitus since shelter doesn’t imply a lack in the animal taken by itself. Animals cannot be naked or lacking the way a man can be, and so can’t have habitus. That’s how I think about it now, but I’d be open to other arguments.