ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses John Philoponus on Individuality and Particularity. An ontology in which the extra-mental existence of universals is rejected gives de facto a particularly interesting role to individuals. It is now established that, at least during his career, Philoponus was a particularist: according to him, everything that exists is particular. One of the aims of the chapter is to demonstrate that his particularist frame of mind dates back to the time of his exegetical work on Aristotle. Note that Philoponus develops an intensive understanding of the universal, he often insists in the Diatetes on the idea that the universal is an intelligible content, as opposed to an extensive conception of the universal which would take the universal to be a collection of particulars. Our study of the issue of particularity allows us to draw some conclusions on the question of individuality. The most obvious is the idea that the posteriority of the universal implies the priority of the individual.
