ABSTRACT
This chapter examines ideas about individuality in late ancient thought by focusing on this Stoic concept and on its 'avatar', the Porphyrian theory of unique combination of properties, in semantic contexts, and especially in grammatical texts. It represents a step in this direction: the notion of 'peculiar quality' used in Apollonian grammar and the Apollonian tradition is already inflected by late interpretation of the Stoic notion within the opposition of peculiar and common qualities, and by the idea of plurality of individuating properties, developed by Porphyry into the notion of a unique bundle of properties. The impact of grammatical treatises on philosophy and theology of the High Middle Ages was considerable; it is during the latter period that the reflections of a 'philosophical grammar' about the 'peculiar quality' merge most fruitfully with the ideas of 'dialecticians' and that 'proper nouns' become in themselves a philosophical concept, a status they have kept until now in philosophical logic and philosophy of language.
