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In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. [1] For example, suppose there are two chairs in a room, each of which is green.
In Aristotle's view, universals are incorporeal and universal, but only exist only where they are instantiated; they exist only in things. [1] Aristotle said that a universal is identical in each of its instances. All red things are similar in that there is the same universal, redness, in each thing.
Platonic realism (also called extreme realism" [33] [34] or exaggerated realism) [35] [36] is the view that universals or forms in this sense, are the causal explanation behind the notion of what things exactly are; (the view that universals are real entities existing independent of particulars).
Platonic Forms were the first universals posited as such in philosophy. [7] Our term "universal" is due to the English translation of Aristotle's technical term katholou which he coined specially for the purpose of discussing the problem of universals. [8] Katholou is a contraction of the phrase kata holou, meaning "on the whole". [9]
Universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color green, the form circularity, and the virtue courage. Universals express aspects or features shared by particulars. For example, Mount Everest and Mount Fuji are particulars characterized by the universal mountain. [30] Universals can take the form of properties or relations.
For example, Socrates is a particular (there's only one Socrates-the-teacher-of-Plato and one cannot make copies of him, e.g., by cloning him, without introducing new, distinct particulars). Redness, by contrast, is not a particular, because it is abstract and multiply instantiated (for example a bicycle, an apple, and a particular woman's hair ...
When used in the context of ethics, the meaning of universal refers to that which is true for "all similarly situated individuals". [3] Rights, for example in natural rights, or in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, for those heavily influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its conception of a human nature, could be considered universal.
Nominalists deny the existence of universals altogether, even as particularised and multiplied within particulars. Moderate realism, however, is considered a midpoint between Platonic realism and nominalism as it holds that the universals are located in space and time although they do not have separate realms. [1]