Relation to truth· Truth, language and sciencedifficulty
Universals
Do general properties exist, or are they merely names?
Many things are "red", many acts are "just": do redness or justice really exist, or do we have only individuals and words to sort them? The status of our concepts, and what our sciences claim to describe, depends on it.
Realism about universals
10General properties really exist, and not merely in our mind: redness or the circle are realities we discover. It remains open whether they exist apart from things (Plato) or only within them (Aristotle).
Explore this position →Platoexplicit
The theory of Forms is realism about universals par excellence: the beautiful, the just, the circle exist in themselves, beyond the sensible, and particular things are only imperfect reflections of them. The universal is more real than the individual.
Republic, VI-VII; Phaedo
Platonismexplicit
The argument starts from the object of knowledge and of definition: science bears on what is one, stable and self-identical, yet no sensible object is so, coming to be, changing and perishing. The one over the many therefore demands a distinct reality, the same Beautiful in which all beautiful things share. Platonism then takes the decisive step will refuse: it this Form from things rather than lodging it in them as an immanent form. This sets it apart both from nominalism, for which the universal is only a name, and from Aristotelian hylomorphism.
Plato, Republic, VI-VII
Aristotleexplicit
Against Plato, Aristotle rejects separate Forms: the universal is real, but it exists only within individuals, as their form. The form of the horse does not exist apart from singular horses, yet it is genuinely real in them. This is an immanent realism.
Metaphysics, Z; Categories, 5
Aristotelianismexplicit
That several men are called « man » presupposes a real universal, not a mere name: science bears on it. But to make it a separate Idea, in 's manner, raises the third-man objection, for one would then need a further form to explain what the sensible man and Man-himself have in common, and so on without end. Aristotelianism therefore keeps the realism of universals while rendering them : genus and species exist only in individuals, and it is the intellect that abstracts them. Neither nominalism nor subsisting Ideas.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z; Categories
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Plotinusexplicit
Like every Platonist, Plotinus holds universals to be realities in themselves, more real than individuals: the intelligible Forms exist independently of sensible things, of which they are the models. But he lodges them in the divine rather than in a separate heaven, which makes them universals ante rem thought by an eternal mind.
Enneads, V, 9 (On Intellect, the Forms and Being)
Husserlinferable
Husserl defends the ideal being of general objects: number, the proposition, the species are no fictions nor mere words, but identical, timeless unities that many acts can intend and recognise as the same. Against and empiricist abstractionism, he holds that the species gives itself in an intuition of its own. This idealism of meanings is yet without a separate Platonic hypostasis: essences are objective, not a world of Forms subsisting in itself.
Logical Investigations, II ("The ideal unity of the species")
Hegelinferable
Against the abstract universal, a mere common mark obtained by erasing differences, Hegel thinks the : a universal that particularizes itself and lives in its individuals, like the concept or the state. Universals are therefore real, but as a structure that actualizes itself, neither separate Forms nor mere names.
Science of Logic, Doctrine of the Concept · Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §163-165
Schopenhauerinferable
The Platonic Ideas, grades of the will's objectification, are more real than the individuals that reflect them: at that level he is frankly a realist. Abstract concepts, by contrast, are only 'representations of representations,' mere tools of reason with no reality of their own, which tempers the realism with a nominalist side.
The World as Will and Representation, Book III
Socratesinferable
When Socrates asks what is courage? or what is piety?, he sets aside the listing of examples and demands the single definition common to every case. Aristotle ascribes two things properly to him, inductive arguments and universal definition, while noting that he did not separate these universals from things, unlike the subsisting Forms Plato would add. To seek the one essence behind the manifold is already to hold the universal to be real.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, XIII, 4, 1078b (universal definitions) · Plato, Euthyphro, 5d-6e; Laches, 190d-192b (the demand for a definition)
Thomas Aquinasexplicit
On the quarrel of universals, Thomas holds a moderate realism that claims to reconcile and : the universal exists in three ways, as an idea in the divine intellect before the thing, as a common form in the individuals, and as an abstract concept in our mind after the thing. He thus refuses both the Platonic realism of separate forms and the nominalism that would see in them only names: the universal is really grounded in things, yet exists as a universal only in the intellect that abstracts it.
On Being and Essence (De ente et essentia), 3-4
Conceptualism
named middle0Genera and species exist neither as realities in themselves nor as mere words. They are concepts the mind forms by noticing resemblances among things. The universal is real, but in thought: neither in a heaven of Ideas nor reduced to a breath of the voice.
Explore this position →No figure stands here, in this slice.
Nominalism
6Only individuals exist. Redness is nothing apart from red things: it is a name we apply to objects that resemble one another. Universals are in language, not in the world.
Explore this position →George Berkeleyexplicit
The introduction to the opens with a polemic against 's : one cannot, Berkeley argues, form the idea of a triangle that is neither equilateral nor scalene, nor of a colour that is no particular colour. Every idea is particular; a word becomes general not because it signifies an abstract essence but because a particular sign stands indifferently for all the individuals resembling it. This is an outright nominalism, and it is not incidental: for Berkeley it is precisely the belief in abstractions that had made it possible to forge the empty concept of matter, the idea of a thing stripped of every perceived quality.
Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, §§6-20
Empiricismexplicit
Nominalism follows directly from the sensory origin of ideas: every perception is of a particular, this triangle, this shade, never of a universal in general, which therefore has no corresponding idea in the mind. Locke still admitted abstract ideas obtained by separation; objects that one cannot form the idea of a triangle that is neither equilateral nor scalene, and reduces the general to a sign standing in for all its likes. Generality thus passes into language, not into things, which dismisses Forms and realist essences as entities with no purchase in experience.
Locke, Essay, III; Hume, Treatise, I, I, 7
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Nietzscheinferable
Concepts arise by equating what is not equal: forgetting singular differences, we forge forms and essences where there are only unique, shifting cases. The universal is a useful fiction, not a reality.
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense
Spinozaexplicit
Universal notions such as "man" or "horse" are not realities: they arise from the confusion of too many images the mind cannot distinguish. They are beings of reason, not things; Spinoza is a nominalist.
Ethics, II, prop. 40, scholium 1
Humeexplicit
Following Berkeley, Hume denies that abstract general ideas exist: an idea is always particular, but a general word ties it to others that resemble it and can recall them. Universals are a matter of words and habit, not of realities.
A Treatise of Human Nature, I, I, 7
Wittgensteininferable
Against the idea that a general word covers a common essence, Wittgenstein invites us to look rather than to suppose: "games" share no single feature, only a network of criss-crossing similarities, like the features of a family, a . The old problem of universals is dissolved, not solved: the error was to presuppose that there had to be something common. Neither a realism of Forms nor a classical nominalism, but a deflation through use.
Philosophical Investigations, §§65-67 (§66, "don't think, but look!")
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Related problems to broaden toward other axes
- DescriptiveWhere does the essence of things come from?
If things have an essence, where do they get it: from a plan that conceives them before they exist, from nature itself, from a convention of our minds, or from nothing?
the essence of thingsEssence and existence