  Philip’s influence in the thirteenth century was especially felt in the area of the transcendentals and in action theory. In this section, I will consider his theory of the transcendentals (although he does not in fact use that term; see Aertsen 2012). I will examine his theory of action in the following section. To some extent, the doctrine of the transcendentals has its roots in the Christian-Platonic discussions of the relationship between created and divine being and goodness, in particular, in Boethius’s De hebdomadibus, which greatly influenced William of Auxerre’s treatment of goodness prefatory to his examination of the virtues in Summa aurea (see Aertsen 2012).  However, its more immediate ancestor is Aristotle’s doctrine of the categories (see MacDonald 1992). Certain properties fall into none of Aristotle’s categories; rather they are properties of all of the things to which the categories are applicable. For this reason, these properties are said to “transcend” the categories. Although there is some variation in what is counted as a transcendental, the list generally included being, unity, truth, and goodness. Thus, everything that falls into any of Aristotle’s categories is a being, has a certain sort of unity, and is true and good to a certain extent. 