1. One of the ten categories of Aristotle, designating that mode of being which is wholly to be directed toward another (ad aliquid). For those scholastics who hold to the existence of real relations, it is noted that relation adds such “towardness” to the absolute accident that serves as its foundation.  Thus, for X “to be taller than Y” adds a relativity to the mere quantity (i.e., the height of X) that founds this relation.   According to certain scholastic positions, relation as such (often referred to as relatio secundum esse) is to be understood as being indifferent to real or merely mental existence.  For this reason, it will be said that relation as such can be a category or not, insofar as the various Aristotelian categories designate solely cognition-independent being.  The denial of the existence of real relations is an important element of nominalist accounts of metaphysics.  In Thomistic accounts of relation, the relation is itself distinguished from its terminus, foundation, and the subject in which it inheres.  The notion of relation is invoked in a number of theological subjects, e.g., the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, the nature of creation. 2. In a more extended and analogical sense, the term relation is used by some later scholastics to refer to the “relativity” of absolute realities toward some other principle, e.g., a substance is “relative” to its environment, as a power is “relative” to its object, or as form is “related” to the matter it informs.  Because this notion of relativity can be found in various Aristotelian categories, it came to be referred to as “transcendental relation.”  Because, however, it is not strictly a relation (relatio secundum esse) but only a relationality required by discourse to explain the conditions befalling an absolute reality, this kind of transcendental relativity is sometimes referred to as a relativity through speech or relatio secundum dici.