# Axioms for category theory

I'm confused of background logic on category theory.

In ZFC set theory, we can construct new sets from existing sets by axioms, such as power set axiom, axiom of pairing etx.

I read first few pages of MacLane's category theory text and now I'm reading Tom Leinster's category theory text. Neither of these texts say whether we need some axioms or not, however, they are using some axioms in some sense without saying. I want to know what are the standard axioms for category theory.

Here are examples:

Firstly, how do we construct $A\times B$ where $A,B$ are categories? It is written in texts that "if we define $Obj(A\times B)=Obj(A)\times Obj(B)$ and $Mor((A_1,B_1),(A_2,B_2))=(Mor(A_1,A_2),Mor(B_1,B_2))$, then $A\times B$ forms a category". What kind of axiom would make this collecting possible?

Secondly, how do we construct a functor category $[A,B]$? How do we make "Collecting functors" process possible?

Thirdly, it is a theorem in text that "fully faith and essenially surjective functors are equivalences". However, to prove this, we need some kind of axiom of choice for category theory.

What would be the standard axioms?

• I suggest you read this Rubertos math.stackexchange.com/questions/724302/what-is-category-theory – Lorenzo Sep 11 '16 at 2:16
• Somewhere early on, MacLane talks about this and makes a choice of what foundations to use in his book. IIRC, he decides to work in ZFC + a large cardinal. Set is then the category whose objects are sets of the corresponding inner model (called "small sets"), and the few times it comes up he uses Ens for the category of all sets. – Hurkyl Sep 12 '16 at 4:50