Universal
Universal
(Lat. universalia, a universal) That term which can be applied throughout the universe. A possibility of discrete being. According to Plato, an idea (which see). According to Aristotle, that which by its nature is fit to be predicated of many. For medieval realists, an entity whose being is independent of its mental apprehension or actual exemplification. (SeeRealism). For medieval nominalists, a general notion or concept having no reality of its own in the realm of being (see Nominalism). In psychologya concept. See Concept, General, Possibility. Opposite ofparticular. — J.K.F.
In ScholasticismUntil the revival of Aristotelianism in the 13th century, universals were considered by most of the Schoolmen as real “second substances.” This medieval Realism (see Realism), of those who legebant in re, found but little opposition from early Nominalists, legentes in voce, like Roscellin. The latter went to the othei extreme by declaring universal names to be nothing but the breath of the voice — flatus vocis. Extreme realism as represented by William of Champeaux, crumbled under the attacks of Abelard who taught a modified nominalism, distinguishing, howevei, sharply between the mere word, vox, as a physical phenomenon, and the meaningful word, sermo.. His interests being much more in logic than in ontology, he did not arrive at a definite solution of the problem. Aquinas summarized and synthetisized the ideas of his predecessors by stating that the universal had real existence only as creative idea in God, ante rem, whereas it existed within experienced reality only in the individual things, in re, and as a mental fact when abstracted from the particulars in the human mind, post rem. A view much like this had been proposed previously by Avicenna to whom Aquinas seems to be indebted. Later Middle-Ages saw a rebirth of nominalistic conceptions. The new school of Terminists, as they called themselves, less crude in its ideas than Roscellin, asserted that universals are only class names. Occam is usually considered as the most prominent of the Terminists. To Aquinas, the universal was still more than a mere name; it corresponded to an ontologicil fact; the definition of the universal reproduces the essence of the things. The universals are with Occam indeed natural signs which the mind cannot help forming, whereas the terms are arbitiary, signa ad placitum. But the universal is only a sign and does not correspond to anything ontological. — R.A.