Landesman, Charles (ed.) - The Problem of Universals

If one were to list the sorts of things that philosophers have characteristically disagreed about, one would find disagreements not only over the solutions to antecedently formulated problems but also over the very terms in which the problems are stated. Often, the very existence of a problem which has moved one generation of philosophers is doubted by the next. The problem of universals is no exception to this philosophical ambivalence. It is and has been a paradigm case of a metaphysical problem; yet in our time there has been a great deal of skepticism over the very possibility of metaphysics. Reasons that many philosophers have found persuasive have been offered to show that metaphysical speculation is either trival or fruitless or meaningless. In offering a collection of essays on the problem of universals, one has an obligation to justify the claim that there is such a problem.