Aristotle’s Categories is one of the foundational texts of Western logic and the philosophy of language. In it, Aristotle sets out his scheme of the basic kinds of things that can be said or predicated — substance, quantity, quality, relation, and the rest — analyzing how words relate to the world they describe.
Brief but profoundly influential, the work shaped medieval and modern thinking about meaning, classification, and the structure of language. It stands at the head of the logical writings known as the Organon and remains essential reading for students of philosophy, logic, and linguistics. This English translation makes Aristotle’s pioneering analysis accessible to the modern reader.