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Universal (metaphysics)
Overview
in metaphysics, repeatable or recurrent qualities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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A similar process will make us acquainted with any other universal of the same sort. Universals of this sort may be called 'sensible qualities'. They can be apprehended with less effort of abstraction than any others, and they seem less removed from particulars than other universals are.
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
The chapter “CHAPTER X. ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF UNIVERSALS” is titled for Universal; names Universal several times.
The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things. The restriction of one's meaning, moreover, to an individual thing, probably requires even more complicated brain-processes than its extension to all the instances of a kind; and the mere mystery, as such, of the…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
The chapter “UNIVERSALS.” is titled for Universal; names Universal several times.
The question of the nature of our consciousness of the universal is much affected by our view as to the general nature of the relation of consciousness to its object. If we adopt the view of Brentano, according to which all mental content has essential reference to an object, it is then natural to suppose that there is some peculiar kind of mental content of which the object is a…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
Names Universal several times; states what Universal is.
Philosophers who discussed Universal (metaphysics)
- Francisco Suárez
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Stilpo
- Dignāga
- Mircea Eliade
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Dharmakirti
- William Whewell
- David Malet Armstrong
- Anselm of Canterbury
- J. L. Austin
- Jean-François Lyotard
- Robert M. Pirsig
- Al-Kindi
- Ibn Taymiyya
- E. J. Lowe (philosopher)
- Aristotle
- Peter Abelard
- Brand Blanshard
- Porphyry of Tyre
- Albert of Saxony (philosopher)
- Ratnakīrti
- Henry of Ghent
- Utpaladeva
Related ideas
- Philosophical realism
- Idealism
- Substantial form
- Predicate (grammar)
- Metaphysics
- Referent
- David Malet Armstrong
- Nominalism
- Ontology
- Particular
- Problem of universals
- Theory of forms
- Substance theory
- Abstraction
- William of Ockham
- Willard Van Orman Quine
- Wilfrid Sellars
- Beauty
- Property (philosophy)
- Conceptualism
- Similarity (philosophy)
- Philosophy of mind
- Moderate realism
- Apoha
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.