Samuel Alexander’s Theory of Categories

The Australian-born British philosopher Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) was one of the first realists of the twentieth century to defend a theory of categories. In Space, Time and Deity (1920) he constructs a realist metaphysics that posits Space-Time as the one monistic entity that encompasses every entity and every feature in reality, including the world's categorial structure. According to Alexander, categories such as existence, universality, relation, order, substance, causality, quantity, and number depend on the intrinsic nature of Space-Time.In developing his theory Alexander was reacting to a variety of contemporary and historical figures. He wanted to reject F.H. Bradley's view that causality, substance, attribute and other would-be categories are mere appearance and not real. He was keen to dismiss Hegelian attitudes one may have had at the time towards the categories such as the view that categories are mutable concepts or laws of thought. For Alexander, categories are real features of reality. He disagreed with the New Realists of America who shared much sympathy with his system such as Edwin B. Holt (1914) who thought that the categories were primitive features that could not be given any further explanation. Alexander insisted on explaining how the categories are grounded in Space-Time. He thus gave a 'reductive' account of their nature. He was also inspired by Plato's doctrine that the highest kinds of being (Sameness, Difference, Rest, and Change) serve as the basis of the variable features of reality (Sophist 250a-260b). And, finally, he saw his view as a development of Kant's. For it was in Kant's doctrine of 'objective external experience containing the categories in correspondence with certain features of Time' that Alexander found the insight that 'Time begotten on Space' could be understood as the ontological source of the world's categorial structure (1920, vol. 1, 191).'Alexander's metaphysics is mostly unknown in contemporary philosophy. Metaphysical speculation and his method of system-building fell out of favour by the beginning of the Second World War partly because of logical positivism, ordinary language philosophy, and the later Wittgenstein. Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore's influence was also on the rise and overshadowed other philosophers from the early twentieth century. However, during his lifetime Alexander was a well-known figure and his metaphysics was widely read and closely studied. By 1924 Alexander was the leading philosopher in Britain (Muirhead 1939, 3). And according to some historians, he is regarded as the one of the greatest philosophers of his time and the chief proponent of realism in Britain in the early twentieth century (Metz 1938, 622-23).In the 1910s, Space, Time and Deity was eagerly sought after by the philosophical community (Broad 1921, 25). John Laird said of the book that "it is the boldest adventure in detailed speculative metaphysics attempted in so grand a manner by any English writer between 1655 (when Hobbes very nearly completed his trilogy by the publication of De Corpore) and 1920" (Laird 1939, 61 ).2 G.F. Stout agreed with Laird's assessment (Stout 1940, l). Bernard Bosanquet told Alexander that "I think your book will be a classic."3 F.H. Bradley called it "a great work."4 John Stuart Mackenzie said "[it] seems to me a magnificent achievement-worthy to be placed along with Appearance and Reality, and certainly in some respects more satisfactory."5 Norman Kemp Smith remarked that Space, Time and Deity "is likely to mark an epoch in British philosophy"6 and that Alexander's "system demands, indeed, a re-writing of the whole history of philosophy."7 Alexander's philosophy affected the work of C.D. Broad, Holt, Laird, William P. Montague, C. Lloyd Morgan, Kemp Smith, and arguably A.N. Whitehead. But more significantly, Alexander had a major influence on the Scottish-born Australian philosopher John Anderson (1893-1962) and the American philosopher Donald C. …