UNIVERSALS, THE QUESTION OF. - A famous controversy, at times highly vociferous, concerning a problem that, due to its formulation in terms not always clear, has presented itself over time as susceptible to opposing solutions.
The first logic of the Greeks was mathematics, which was so called because it appeared as the "discipline" par excellence, inasmuch as it allows, through the use of number and geometric figures, the reduction of the multiplicity of experience to unity, that which seemed ever varied and different under the dominion of an immutable law, that which was sensible impression transformed into science. The concepts of mathematics were organized into genera and species within a compact system that permitted the most rigorous deduction, and this was transferred to physical reality along with number, considered the essence of things. To overcome sensism and the consequent relativism of the Sophists, Socrates inaugurated the search for the universal concept in the treatment of moral problems (Aristotle, Met., I, ch. 6, 987 b 1-4). Plato extended this method of research to nature in general, universalizing qualities on the model of numbers and geometric figures, which are abstract quantitative schemata, without considering that physical qualities, once schematized, become unreal abstractions, such as animality, horseness, etc. Platonic Ideas are, for the most part, abstractions of empirical qualities, which usurp the fixity (necessity, eternity, universality) of numbers and figures. And just as the Pythagoreans had made number the "essence" of things, so for Plato the Ideas are the eternal and universal essence of mutable and contingent things that appear in space and time. Placed above space and time, they exist in themselves and by themselves, beyond the heavens, which is the limit of all mutability, and thus have a hyperuranian nature, articulated in a system of dialectical relations around the Idea of the Good, from which they are irradiated.
Aristotle did not deny Platonic Ideas, but criticized their separation from the sensible world, showing that a separated Idea cannot be the essence or cause of things, nor the principle of their knowability; and he strove to reunite what Plato had separated, reducing the Idea to an act that determines and organizes matter, as an intelligible principle of unity and distinction and as a form inherent in things themselves (εἶδος ἐνυλοϋ, Met., VII, ch. 11, 1037 a, 29).
Plato, as is well known, long sought to resolve the problem of the relationship to be established between the separated Idea and the things of the sensible world, and, after considering a relationship of μίμησις and διὰς, settled on a relationship of χρόνος, envisaging the possibility that one and the same essence, in itself one and separate, could be communicated, not in parts, but whole and entire, to particular things, without losing its unity, so as to be able to be called "one in many" and "one among many" (cf. Parmenides, opp. 5-6, 131-133 a). Aristotle also adhered to this manner of participation. Yet the form inherent in things acquires, upon contact with matter, an individual mode of being, and loses Platonic universality. To preserve this universality, without which there can be no science, Aristotle devised the doctrine of abstraction and of the active intellect. In particular things, the universal exists only potentially; but freed from contact with matter, it is an act, thanks to the action of the active intellect, which draws it from the particulars. Hence he could affirm that "the universal soul is nothing, or is posterior" to particular animals (De anima, I, ch. 1, 402 b, 5-8).
The Neoplatonists also adhered to this thesis of the presence (παρουσία) of the universal in the particular. Plotinus gathered Plato's separated Ideas into the νοῦς and constituted that νοητὸς χρόνος, in which the "ideal reasons" of all things are collected, dialectically arranged by genera, species, and specific differences; but the world soul impresses these "ideal reasons" upon matter and makes them the very essence of things in the Aristotelian manner. Thus the universal is separated in the νοῦς, and is present and inherent in particular things, where, however, the Neoplatonists project the dialectical hierarchy of genera and species, which they render as so many different strata of physical reality, so that the same "animality" is in all animals, the same "horseness" in all horses, etc.
Porphyry, in his Isagoge to the Categories or De quinque vocibus, had outlined the tree of these hierarchically ordered concepts and had also touched upon the problem of whether genera and species are subsistent realities or concepts of our mind. Though he offered no solution, the mere posing of the question spurred others to seek one. The first to propose a solution was Boethius. At the beginning of his commentary on the opusculum of Porphyry that he had translated, he summarizes the Aristotelian solution, namely that genera and species subsist only in individuals, but that, thanks to the power of abstraction of the human mind, "intelligunt praeter sensibilia." And again: "Sunt quidem in singularibus, cogitantur vero universalia; nihilque aliud species esse putanda est, nisi cogitatio collecta ex individuorum dissimili numero substantiali similitudine." But in expounding this doctrine, he notes that Plato "genera et species ceteraque non modo intelligi universalia, verum etiam esse atque praeter corpora subsistere putat."
The reading of Porphyry's little book and Boethius's commentary on the Categories provided the occasion for disputes in the medieval schools of dialectic. But it must not be forgotten that Platonic Ideas, already gathered by Plotinus into the νοῦς, the first emanation of the One, had been transferred by St. Augustine into the divine mind, where they constituted the "ideal" or "primordial reasons" of created beings. Neoplatonic thought, moreover, besides its influence on St. Augustine, strongly affected the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Augustinian and Pseudo-Dionysian doctrines certainly influenced John Scotus Eriugena (v.), Remigius of Auxerre, and Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II), who attributed to universals not only a real existence as Ideas in the divine mind, but also as strata of reality upon which all degrees of logical abstraction are projected. As for the reality of Ideas in the divine mind (ideas ante rem), all Christian thinkers were in agreement. The point of disagreement concerned the existence of universals in re. Realism was the tendency that held genera and species to be so many strata of physical reality, so that one and the same identical nature, e.g., of animal, differentiates itself into its species, and one identical specific nature, e.g., of horse, differentiates itself into individual horses. And since it was customary in the Middle Ages to transfer dialectic into theology, for the service of which it was employed, Odo of Tournai thought that the individual is not a substance, but a "property" of the substance "man," and held that only in this way could one explain how Adam's sin, infecting human nature, numerically identical in all men, was transmitted to all descendants (PL 160, 1079 and 1090). But the chief representative of CHAMPLEVE (v.), at least until Abelard compelled him substantially to modify his realistic doctrine. Anselm's realism, on the other hand, remained within the limits of Platonic-Augustinian realism, though in polemic against Roscelin, Anselm let slip a phrase that smacks of realism (De fide trin., ch. 2), which has made historians raise their eyebrows. Neoplatonic and Eriugenian realism continued, however, in the School of Chartres, with Bernard and Thierry of Chartres and Clarembald of Arras (12th century); through Amaury of Bène and David of Dinant, it even degenerated into pantheism.
BIBL.:
Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. W. Jaeger, Oxford 1924.
Plotinus, Enneads, ed. P. Henry and H.-R. Schwyzer, Paris-Brussels 1951-.
Boethius, In Isag. Porph., ed. S. Brandt, CSEL 48, Vienna 1906.
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, Opera, ed. G. Heil, Berlin 1937.
St. Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, q. 46, PL 40, 24-26.
John Scotus Eriugena, De divisione naturae, PL 122.
William of Champeaux, Glossae super Porphyrium, ed. N. M. Häring, Toronto 1966.
Abelard, Logica Ingredientibus, ed. B. Geyer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 21, 1-3, Münster 1919-1933.
A Neoplatonic realist current is also found among the Arabs with the book *Delle cinque sostanze* of the pseudo-Empedocles, with the so-called *Theologia Aristotelis*, and with the *Liber de causis*; among the Jews, with the *Fons vitae* of Avicebron or Ibn Gabirol (11th century).
Opposed to the realist current was nominalism (v.), represented by Erico or Enrico d'Auxerre, by Raimberto da Lilla, Roscellino (v.), who was accused by St. Anselm of falling into tritheism. These “heretics of dialectic,” as Anselm called the nominalists, “non nisi flatu vocis putant esse universales substantias”; so that, failing to understand “quomodo plures homines in specie sint unus homo” (this is precisely the excessive phrase that the abbot of Bec let slip), they could not even understand “quomodo plures personae, quarum singula quaeque est perfectus Deus, sint unus Deus.”
But with the return of Aristotle, these extreme positions had to be abandoned. Among the Arabs, the restorer of Aristotelian doctrine concerning universals was Averroes (12th century). For this celebrated commentator, “universalia... sunt collecta ex particularibus in intellectu, qui accipit inter ea similitudinem et facit unam intentionem” (*Metaph.*, XII, comm. 4); so that “intellectus est, qui facit in rebus universalitatem” (*De anima*, I, comm. 8). In particular things there is only the *similitudo*; only through a process of abstraction is this fixed into a universal concept.
During the 12th century, Aristotle’s *Metaphysics* and *De anima* began to spread also in the Latin West, so that the theory expounded by Boethius concerning universals could be better understood. Already Abelard had proposed a solution to the problem different from that of Roscellino and William of Champeaux. To the *voces* of the nominalists he substituted the *sermones*, since the former are mere *flatus*, while the latter imply instead a logical function. Other intermediate solutions had also been proposed. But it was the knowledge of the *Metaphysics* and the *De anima*, as well as of the Averroistic commentary, that restored Aristotelian doctrine concerning universals to the forefront. St. Thomas, who in the 13th century was its most strenuous advocate, agrees on this point with Averroes.
The metaphysical presupposition of this doctrine, characterized as “mitigated realism,” is this: the universal, known through an act of thought, has a foundation in physical reality, inasmuch as form constitutes the *ousia* (κατὰ τὸν λόγον) of things (Aristotle, *De anima*, II, ch. 1, 412 a 5 ff., 412 b 10 ff.) and is, in itself, universal like the Platonic idea.
This Aristotelian-Averroistic-Thomistic theory is the one that prevailed in Scholasticism from the 13th century onward.
Nevertheless, traces of Neoplatonism are not difficult to find, for example, in the *Summa philosophiae*, attributed to Robert Grosseteste, published by L. Baur in *Beitr. Gesch. Philos. Mitt.*, IX, Münster i. V. 1912, where it is maintained (pp. 351-52) that genera and species “veras aliquas res dicunt et non solas intentiones logicales.” Connected with this theory is that of the plurality of forms in individual natural beings, which holds that the generic form is really distinct from the specific form, and this from the “specialissima” species (John of Jandun, *De anima*, I, qq. 8-9; *Phys.*, VII, q. 8; *Metaphys.*, II, q. 11), and from this thesis derive the famous “realitates” or “formalitates” of Duns Scotus (v.) and his school, which differ from one another “a parte rei.”
A pronounced realistic tendency is also noted in John Buridan, followed by John Wyclif, by Paul of Venice, who brought it from Oxford to Padua, where it was upheld by Nicoletto Vernia, in regard to the problem “utrum dentur universalia realia,” and vigorously opposed by Pietro Pomponazzi. Alessandro Achillini, author of a treatise *De universalibus* (Bologna 1501), remained in the Aristotelian-Averroistic position.
As has been seen, the Aristotelian thesis contains a twofold element: one subjective and gnoseological, the universalizing activity of the intellect; the other objective and metaphysical, the form existing in things. In modern philosophy, the tendency has been increasingly to develop the first element and to eliminate the second. William of Ockham (v.) is the leader of the so-called nominalists of the 14th century. Having affirmed the priority and preeminence of intuitive knowledge over abstractive knowledge, the universal remains merely a function of the latter, which never attains reality in its concreteness but serves only to unify and order experience by means of terms, *fictiones* and *intentiones* in the soul. With substantial forms and hidden essences banished from the world of nature, Galilean and Cartesian physics reduces all phenomena to forms of mechanical motion: the universal is only the law expressed in mathematical formulas. And it is precisely in mathematics that the universal seems confined, while empiricism and sensism proceed to dissolve the physical world, denying the reality of bodies, which Descartes had reduced to mere extended masses endowed with motion. Descartes, however, recognized universal and necessary value in innate ideas, which have their foundation in the ideas of the divine mind; an Augustinian thesis that, reworked by Malebranche, was to be developed in ontologism. In Spinoza’s system there is an “ordo et connexio” (Ethics, II, 19); a thesis substantially accepted also by Berkeley, for whom our perceptions ultimately derive from the ideas of the divine mind irradiating upon created spirits and are their symbol. A resolute denial of the universal and necessary value of ideas and principles of reason is found instead in Hume and then in positivism.
In an attempt to overcome the empirico-rationalistic antinomy, Kant made universals the a priori forms of knowing within which the subject orders experience: thus all our knowledge, as to content, derives from contingent and mutable “experiences,” and all, as to the a priori and universal form that illuminates and conditions experience itself, are logically prior to II. Proper knowledge is only the a priori synthesis. By thus emphasizing the universalizing function of the knowing subject, post-Kantian idealism transferred this function to the absolute Ego, which for Hegel is Idea, which, even in its becoming, preserves its transcendent absoluteness and resolves all reality into itself.
In reaction against Hegelian idealism, positivism found itself greatly embarrassed in justifying the universal value of science. A. Comte held that mathematics, placed at the summit of knowledge, could suffice for this purpose. But empirio-criticism, contingentism, intuitionism, and pragmatism attacked the universal even in the stronghold, which seemed impregnable, of mathematics, stripping this science of all theoretical value and leaving it with a purely utilitarian and economic abstractive function.
This thesis, for some elements of truth that it contains, was also accepted in Croce’s system of the philosophy of the spirit, which relegates the sciences of nature and mathematics among pseudo-concepts, and reserves the function of universalizing reality in the unity of thought only for the theoretical judgment, which is both universal and concrete.