What Is the Difference Between a Particular and a Universal?

Philosophy

The Difference between a Particular and a Universal

Language and meaning exist as a result of association. One word does not have meaning without relation to other words and other meanings. We come to have knowledge and understanding with the assistance of particulars and universals. Particulars and universals work in the same way as words and language provide meaning because their association and relative existence among other words and other languages. Particulars are words that have direct and specific relation to an object, concept, etc. Universals rely on the function of particulars to stand as universals. Universals are not disagreed upon while particulars retain a greater degree of variation.

When we examine common words, we find that, broadly speaking, proper names stand for particulars, while other substantives, adjectives, prepositions, and verbs stand for universals. Pronouns stand for particulars, but are ambiguous: it is only by the context or the circumstances that we know what particulars they stand for. The word 'now' stands for a particular, namely the present moment; but like pronouns, it stands for an ambiguous particular, because the present is always changing. It will be seen that no sentence can be made up without at least one word which denotes a universal. The nearest approach would be some such statement as 'I like this'. But even here the word 'like' denotes a universal, for I may like other things, and other people may like things. Thus all truths involve universals, and all knowledge of truths involves acquaintance with universals. (Russell, 1997)

Universals are uniformly understood and agreed upon. Particulars are in flux because they describe and more directly relate to the present, which itself is in constant flux. Universals exist across time, so in this way they are atemporal, which is arguably another illustration of what it means to be universal. We can say then that universals are more fixed with respect to meaning, while particulars are contingent on time with meanings that are relative and constantly shifting.

Universals, furthermore, depend upon and illustrate the presence of a priori knowledge, a sort of foreknowledge of knowing or a kind of cultural intuition with respect to meaning, knowledge, and truth.

This suggests a proposition which we shall now endeavour to establish: namely, All a priori knowledge deals exclusively with the relations of universals. This proposition is of great importance, and goes a long way towards solving our previous difficulties concerning a priori knowledge. The only case in which it might seem, at first sight, as if our proposition were untrue, is the case in which an a priori proposition states that all of one class of particulars belong to some other class, or (what comes the same thing) that all particulars having some one property also have some other. In this case it might seem as though we were dealing with the particulars that have the property rather than with the property. (Russell, 1997)