ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, the reader is first introduced to the issue of natural simultaneity of relatives as discussed by Aristotle in Categories 7, 7b15–8a12. In this text, Aristotle maintains that, although relatives seem to be for the most part simultaneous by nature, there seem to be some exceptions. He mentions two pairs of relatives as exceptions, namely knowledge/knowable and perception/perceptible, and argues at length for the priority of the second relative over the first one in each case. In the next section, this issue is put into context, by sketching Aristotle’s approach to relatives throughout Chapter 7 of the Categories. In the last section of the chapter, the problem to be addressed in the book is characterised at length. This problem can be summarised as follows: there are arguably good, independent reasons to maintain that Aristotle is right in claiming that not all relatives are simultaneous by nature; the question is, however, whether he is also right for the reasons he actually gives for this claim in the Categories. The chapter ends by proposing a negative answer to this question, to be justified in the remainder of the book. A relevant consequence of this answer is that the pairs of relatives that Aristotle takes as not exemplifying the natural simultaneity of relatives are instances of this feature after all.
