Card 1.1.2 · Root I — Metaphysics
Universals and Particulars
A tomato and a fire engine are both red. Is there something they share?
This question asks whether the properties that many things share — redness, roundness, justice — exist in their own right, or whether only particulars exist, with the sharing explained by concepts, resemblance, particular properties or words.
On this card
Where it sits
Under 1.1 Ontology. Borders 6.9 Philosophy of mathematics and 6.10.1 Reference and meaning.
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The rival answers
Spectrum universals fully real → no real universals
| Position | Claim |
|---|---|
| Platonic realism | Universals exist independently, outside space and time |
| Aristotelian realism | Universals are real but exist only in their instances |
| Conceptualism | Universals exist, but only as concepts in minds |
| Resemblance nominalism | Only particulars; grouping rests on resemblance |
| Predicate nominalism | Only particulars; grouping rests on our use of predicates |
| Trope theory | Properties are particular — this tomato's redness is its own |
| Apoha (exclusion nominalism) | No real universal is shared; classification works by excluding what does not fall under the term |
Where do you stand?
A tomato and a fire engine are both red. Is there something they share?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plato | c. 428–348 BCE | Greek | The Forms; particulars participate in them |
| Aristotle | 384–322 BCE | Greek | Universals immanent in things, not separate |
| Dignāga | c. 480–540 | Indian Buddhist | Apoha: a word means by excluding what it is not |
| Ibn Sina | 980–1037 | Islamic | Essence considered in itself, neither universal nor particular |
| William of Ockham | c. 1287–1347 | Scholastic | Nominalism: a universal is a singular sign predicable of many, not a thing shared by many |
| Porphyry | c. 234–305 | Greek | Posed whether genera and species exist; through Boethius’s commentary, his questions framed the medieval universals debate |
Also on this question: Cheng Yi Raghunātha Śiromaṇi
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Existence & being:
- If the One cannot be described, how did Plotinus manage to write so much about it? 6 replies
- Reading group: Porphyry’s Isagoge and the three questions he refused to answer 6 replies
- Rāmānuja’s question ‘whose ignorance?’ is the objection Advaita never answered 6 replies
- Reading group: A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936), chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6 6 replies
- Is Yogācāra “consciousness-only” idealism? Three readings and a false friend 6 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Existence & being
Connections
→ 1.1 · ↔ 1.1.4 Abstract objects, 6.9, 6.10.1 · ◇ Platonic realism, Aristotelian realism, nominalism, conceptualism, trope theory · ○ Axial Age; Classical; Scholastic; Table 1
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 27.