On the Genealogy of Universals

Abstract

This book provides new insights into the origins and development of analytic philosophy by undertaking a genealogy of universals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Examining neglected texts and figures—the early writings of Moore and Russell, the philosophies of Whitehead and Stout—it describes a forgotten narrative that runs from Moore’s engagement with Kant and culminates in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Ramsey’s work influenced by it. Following Hume’s lead on causation, Kant had problematized the particular–universal distinction. Early Moore took Kant’s lesson on board, but overthrew Kant’s transcendental justification of the distinction. Wittgenstein and Ramsey bore out Moore’s scepticism about the particular–universal distinction when they realized the consequences of their pictorial doctrine of representation and their correlative account of the unity of the fact—a form of naturalism which means only the world can disclose its categories to us in experience. Between the beginning and end of this narrative, this book uncovers previously overlooked contributions to the conversation about universals central to analytic philosophy. First, Russell’s initial steps from Kantianism into analytic philosophy and the subsequent metaphysics revealed in the interstices of his commentary on Leibniz. Then the interweaving development of Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgement and his theory of relations which shows Wittgenstein never refuted the multiple relation theory. Finally, Russell’s own anticipation of Wittgenstein’s picture theory, Stout’s doctrine of abstract particulars as a category superseding particulars and universals and Whitehead’s theory of objects and events as a prelude to Ramsey’s scepticism about the particular–universal distinction.