Relation to truth· Truth, language and science
Realism about universals
Axis: Universals — Do general properties exist, or are they merely names?
General 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).
Movements 2
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
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
Philosophers 8
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
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)
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
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
Show inferred positions (4)
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)
The definition exercise: "what is it?"ExerciseAttested · Socrates
did not pile up examples but sought the single definition: what is courage, justice, friendship, beyond particular cases? This exercise revives that move: testing a definition against counterexamples until you tighten it. You rarely reach the perfect formula, but you discover that a word you took to be obvious is harder and richer than you thought, and you judge more finely afterwards.
- Pick a value-laden word you use often without defining it: courage, justice, respect, success, friendship.
- Write your definition in one sentence: "X is…".
- Find a case your definition wrongly includes (it is too broad), then a case it wrongly excludes (it is too narrow).
- Revise the definition to absorb both cases, then run the test again on the new version.
- Stop when you can no longer find an easy counterexample, or when you get stuck: note what the obstacle taught you about the word.
The aim is not to win a perfect definition, nor to trap the other person if you do it in pairs, but to see more clearly. The aporia, the moment you admit you could not really define the word, is a result, not a failure.