Anti-Platonism in Aristotle’s Categories

I enquire into some aspects of Aristotle’s ontology in the Categories that involve disagreement with Plato’s views. In particular, I argue that beneath the surface of Aristotle’s distinction between different kinds of ‘entities’ in ch. 2 lies a deeper distinction between more and less fundamental entities; that, more specifically, all entities other than individual substances ultimately depend on individual substances; and that the dependence in question is best understood as explanatory dependence or ‘grounding’. I try to substantiate these theses on the basis of some passages of the treatise and also draw some evidence from the Posterior Analytics. In the final section I turn to examine the widespread claim that the ontology of the Categories is ‘essentialist’ and that this constitutes a further disagreement with Plato. This claim, I argue, is ultimately correct but needs some qualifications.