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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good topical collection., June 8, 2000
"The problem of universals has a rich history that dates back, at least, to Plato. It is a distinctively philosophical problem demonstrated by the fact that people other than philosophers are generally unaware that the problem even exists. Nevertheless, it is a real problem because particulars are, and can only be, described by their characteristics. Such characteristics are qualities and qualities are what are generally understood to be universals. . . . [I]t is [also] indubitable that relations exist . . . . Once it is understood that qualities and relations are ontologically inescapble, it remains to determine the nature of such beasts."Thus Andrew Schoedinger introduces and motivates the problem of universals -- the problem, that is, of characterizing the nature and ontological status of qualities and relations that may be predicated of more than one "particular" or occur identically in more than one context. And a thorough collection it is. The problem of universals did not die during the Middle Ages; there are twenty-eight selections in this volume, of which fully eighteen were originally published during the twentieth century. The first eleven essays carry us from Plato and Aristotle through Abelard, Aquinas and Locke to Kant and Hegel; the baton is then passed to Husserl and Heidegger, Russell and Ramsey, and fourteen other recent philosophers. Each selection is introduced by a helpful summary from Schoedinger. One mildly irritating feature of this collection is the absence of first names: Bertrand Russell is just "Russell," F.P. Ramsey is just "Ramsey." The problem is more acute for philosophers who are not exactly household names; the reader who has never heard of e.g. H.H. Price, Nicholas Wolterstorff, or Richard Aaron will have some difficulty locating further information on them. However, that is a small complaint which does not tell against the excellence of the collection itself. This volume makes a good companion to D.M. Armstrong's _Universals: An Opinionated Introduction_ and to the collection _Properties_ edited by D.H. Mellor and Alex Oliver.
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