relation to their instances, and so are the same amid diversity, and in so far
as individuals also have this structure in relation to their attributes, they
should be thought of as ‘concrete universals’.
Support for this reading of the pos ition occupied by the British Idealists is
taken from various comments by leading figures such as Bradley and
Bosanquet. Thus, Bradley writes that while from one ‘point of view’ an
individual (such as a man) is a particular because it excludes all other
individuals, from another ‘point of view’ a man ‘is universal because he is
one throughout all his different attributes’;
6
and, he goes on to remark, ‘In
‘‘Caesar is sick’’, Caesar is not affirmed to be nothing but sick: he is a
common bond of many attributes, and is therefore universal’,
7
so that ‘[t]he
individual is ...a concrete universal’.
8
Bosanquet writes:
Let us take such a judgment as ‘Caesar crossed the Rubicon’. . . Precisely the
point of the judgement is that the same man united in himself or persisted
through different relations, say, of being conqueror of Gaul and of marching
into Italy. The Identity is the Individual, or the concrete universal, that persists
through these relations.
9
Bosanquet’s suggestion that we should ‘[take] an individual as designated
by a proper name for the example of a [concrete] universal’
10
seems to be
what is central and distinctive about the British Idealists’ position on this
issue.
It is also, clearly, what is most problematic, both in itself and as an
interpretation of Hegel. The difficulty with the position in itself , is that it
appears to involve a confusion: for how can an individual be a universal,
concrete or otherwise? There is of course a one/many relation between an
individual and its parts, temporal parts, attributes etc, and also between a
universal and its instances: but this structural similarity is no reason to
confound the two, as these British Idealists seem happy to do. It is hard to
6
F. H. Bradley, Principles of Logic, 2nd edn, corrected, 2 vols (Oxford, 1928) Vol. I, p. 188.
7
Ibid., 191.
8
Ibid., 188.
9
Bernard Bosanquet, ‘The Philosophical Importance of a True Theory of Identity’, reprinted in
his Essays and Addresses, 2nd edn (London, 1891) 162–80, esp. pp. 165–6. Cf. also Bernard
Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic (London, 1895) 65:
So the reference of a proper name is a good example of what we called a universal or
an identity. That which is referred to by such a name is a person or thing whose
existence is extended in time and its parts bound together by some continuous
quality – an individual person or thing and the whole of this individuality is referred to
in whatever is affirmed about it. Thus the reference of such a name is universal, not as
including more than one individual, but as including in the identity of the individual
numberless differences – the acts, events, and relations that make up its history and
situation.
10
Bosanquet, Essays and Addresses, 167.
HEGEL AND THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 117
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