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No matter how many ways I think of it - just how Socrates is a Man, any differentia is a Quality. So for eg, one much used example is 'rational' - man is a rational animal, where man is species, animal the genus and rational a differentia.

Isn't rational a Quality? Doesn't it come under the category of Quality?

Rajan Aggarwal
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  • Unfortunately it doesn't. It became a discussion about Aquinas and how he needed to preserve essential differences from accidental differences - the former becoming differentia and the latter becoming Quality. It still seems to me that there is no basis for this distinction (other than the religious). Aristotle wasn't a christian after all, so what's his reason for making this distinction - that's what I would have liked to know. My mistake? I polluted the previous question with the baggage of Univocity of Being and theology. – Rajan Aggarwal Aug 26 '20 at 10:18
  • Aristotle has 10 categories that can be predicated. Why should quality have the unique privilege of serving as differentia? Why not having, for example, as in having wings? His "quality" is not the loose catchall of today, it is restricted to dispositions, capabilities, affections and shape, and "winged" does not really sound like any of those. – Conifold Aug 26 '20 at 12:43
  • All right, but my point was that differentia could just be another category. – Rajan Aggarwal Aug 26 '20 at 17:08
  • Winged is a capability or a shape – Rajan Aggarwal Aug 26 '20 at 17:09
  • It could be any of the ten, "man" is a substance, for example. "Rational" sounds much more like a capability than "winged". Aristotle already had [essential and accidental properties](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/#EssHom) quite aside from quality. So I do not really follow what the question is. – Conifold Aug 26 '20 at 17:29
  • This is coming dangerously close to "what do you think/why am I wrong" sort of opinion-polling -- please consider citing more directly from whatever you're reading that might have made this an interesting/important problem to help focus the question and ground the answers – Joseph Weissman Aug 26 '20 at 18:39

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