ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 begins by analysing what sorts of things the relatives are for Aristotle and advocates that, like qualities and quantities, they must be taken as properties of a subject. Next, a peculiarity of relatives which is unparalleled in any other category is considered, namely the fact that all relatives come in pairs which reciprocate. This peculiarity is analysed taking especially into account the framework of the classification of types of being given by Aristotle in Cat. 2 (commonly known as the “ontological square”). Some of the main contentions throughout the chapter can be summarised as follows: (1) Relatives are not substances and thus, according to the ontological square, they must either be in a primary substance or said of a primary substance. (2) However, this seems contradicted by the cases in which, although one of the related subjects no longer exists or does not exist yet, the relationship itself seems to persist or to be already in place. For, in such cases, one of the relatives does not appear to be either in a primary substance or to be said of a primary substance. (3) After testing and rejecting several compatibilisation hypotheses, it is shown that Aristotle is implicitly committed to the existence of temporally asymmetrical relations, in which the two related subjects exist in partially different times, but the relation itself subsists for as long as any of them currently exists from the moment the relation was established. (4) The assumption of temporally asymmetrical relations has certain important consequences which are then analysed and discussed.
