Aristotle on the Category of Relation

In Aristotle on the Category of Relation, Pamela Hood challenges the view that Aristotle's conception of relation is so divergent from our own that it does not count as a theory of relation at all. Professor Hood examines Aristotle's various treatments of relation and relational entities with a special focus on Aristotle's two central texts on relation, Categories 7 and Metaphysics V.15. While the common view is that Aristotle does not have, and indeed could not have, a theory that accounts for dyadic relations, Hood's analysis reveals Aristotle's deep commitment to the dyadic nature of relation. She also unearths a feature in Aristotle's relational theory that appears to account not only for the terms of a dyadic relation, but also for the relation itself. This book presents compelling evidence that Aristotle's theory of relation is more robust than originally suspected.