Categories. Histories and Perspectives

The reflection upon the categories leaves a fundamental mark in the history of philosophy. By theorizing such issue, philosophy gains a meta-reflexive feature, which is probably one of the most distinguishing traits of this kind of knowledge, including its method. In the history of philosophy, the question of the categories has been gradually investigated and clarified but it still remains to be solved. Therefore, from a philosophical perspective, the history of the categories is far from coming to an end: since ancient times, it has been debated and discussed, thus revealing all its theoretical potential. Such a broad history should be taken into account by any present study that wants to represent a real progress in the research, in order to avoid repeating errors that have been already made in the past. Among other things, this is one of the objectives of the present volume, which comes from the will to describe some paths and perspectives of this history, without claiming to deliver an exhaustive overview and rather representing the first partial contribution to a wider project.