ABSTRACT
Abelard attacked William’s realism and developed an alternative view taking “whatever is a particular” as a principle. Both his critical argument and his form of nominalism were to become classics, and variants would eventually be set out in the development of analytic philosophy in the course of the twentieth century. Russell and Moore also argued that ordinary particulars could not be construed in terms of universals or complexes of universals, for numerical diversity and particularity of things could not be accounted for in terms of universal attributes. Russell argued that relations could not serve as individuating characteristics of particulars, since a relation could only be taken to ground the individuation of particulars if it is assumed to be irreflexive. The problem posed by distinguishing particulars from universals in terms of a fundamental one-directional relation, tie or connection, has been raised from the time of the Greeks through the medieval period and into the modern and contemporary eras.
