Abstract

We can learn to read Aristotle differently and more consciously by assessing the work of the German scholars who attempted to reconstruct the doctrine of categories during the Nineteenth century. The article focuses on Venanzio Raspa’s book on the German debate on Aristotelian categories and on the essays by Trendelenburg and Apelt that have recently been edited in Italian by Raspa himself. According to Trendelenburg and Apelt, the nature of Aristotelian categories was primarily conceptual. Yet this interpretation can be made consistent with Bonitz’s ontological reading thanks to some considerations on Aristotle’s De Anima drawn by the French scholar Chaignet. In the process Bonitz’s view on experience in Aristotle needs to be reformulated accordingly and the result uncovers the relevance of Aristotelian categories to the theory of possible worlds.