The nature of the relationship between \u201cuniversals\u201d\u2014Humanity, Justice, Goodness, etc.\u2014and \u201cparticulars\u201d\u2014this human being, this instance of justice and that instance of goodness\u2014is a matter that philosophers have been busy at work trying to iron out for millennia.\u00a0 On a reasonably broad spectrum, there are two rival poles: the one is represented by Plato, the other by John Locke.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Plato insisted that not only are universals real, they are ultimately more <\/em>real than particulars.\u00a0 Universals are eternal, immutable, and incorruptible while particulars, in contrast, are temporal, mutable, and corruptible.\u00a0 For example, individual human beings come and go, but the universal of Humanity is always and forever the same.\u00a0 It is the universal that invests the particular with identity and, thus, renders us capable of recognizing it as the particular that it is.\u00a0 From this perspective, particulars stand in relation to universals as shadows stand in relation to the objects that cast them: particulars depend <\/em>upon universals for their being.<\/p>\n Hence, Plato\u2019s position has been branded an especially robust form of \u201crealism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n John Locke, on the other hand, didn\u2019t just reject the notion that universals are more real than particulars; he staunchly rejected the very idea that universals are real at all.\u00a0 Universals have no \u201contological\u201d standing.\u00a0 They have no reality, that is.\u00a0 They are but general terms <\/em>that we invent for the sake of rendering our experience of particulars more manageable.\u00a0 So, for instance, there is no such thing as \u201chumanity\u201d; there are only individual, particular human beings. \u00a0From our experience with the latter, we abstract those features that are common to all humans.\u00a0 To this set of common features we ascribe the label, the name,<\/em> \u201chumanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of his claim that universals are really just names <\/em>that we reserve for groups of particulars, Locke\u2019s position is known as \u201cnominalism.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly, while Plato\u2019s and Locke\u2019s perspectives on the relationship between universals and particulars are mutually incompatible, they both agree<\/em> that particulars of any given kind must be related by way of some common characteristics.\u00a0 So, in order for this <\/em>being and that <\/em>being to both be human <\/em>beings, there must be some attributes that they share in common with one another as well as with every <\/em>other human being so-called.<\/p>\n It is this supposition that we should rethink while contemplating liberty.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cLiberty\u201d is a general or universal term.\u00a0 This much no one would think to dispute.\u00a0 Nor would anyone think to deny that people\u2019s experience(s) with liberty is real. The question, though, is whether there in fact are common ideas upon which people\u2019s experiences with liberty converge.<\/p>\n Given the varied understandings of liberty of which just our own political universe consists, to say nothing of those that inform the political worlds of others, it would appear that if <\/em>there are any beliefs around which all of these center, they are so abstract as to be virtually meaningless.\u00a0 Liberty, it may be said by all self-proclaimed partisans of liberty, entails freedom of one sort or another.\u00a0 This answer, though, is not at all enlightening and, in fact, only compounds our problem, for we are left asking: what does it mean to be free?\u00a0 <\/em>As is the case with liberty, there are as many mutually exclusive accounts of freedom as there are statements of liberty, and it appears that there are no other commonalities among them to be found.<\/p>\n Liberty is said to be a \u201cpositive\u201d good, the freedom to <\/em>pursue x, y, or z.\u00a0 It is also claimed that it is \u201cnegative,\u201d the freedom of the individual from <\/em>external interference vis-\u00e0-vis his pursuits.\u00a0Liberty is supposedly a \u201cpower\u201d that, as such, presupposes a distribution of material satisfactions that is far less unequal than that typically found in \u201ccapitalist\u201d societies.\u00a0 On the other hand, far from being inseparable from liberty, many argue that such distributive schemes are radically antithetical to it.\u00a0Liberty, we are told by some, consists in \u201crights;\u201d others emphasize the role of \u201cduties\u201d in defining liberty.\u00a0 Some say that liberty demands a strong federal government, while others regard such a thing as a threat to liberty.\u00a0Liberty, on one view, requires government, while on another, liberty precludes government.\u00a0Liberty is rooted in religion and it is undermined by religion.<\/p>\n In short, leftists affirm liberty and freedom just as surely as do libertarians and anarchists, and these ambiguous concepts find their most vocal champions among orthodox Muslims no less than among the most \u201capple pie\u201d of Americans.<\/p>\n Maybe there is some unchanging, eternal standard of liberty by which we can evaluate particular understandings of liberty.\u00a0 If so, however, we have as yet proven incapable of discovering what it is.\u00a0 And maybe there is some set of overlapping features that these conceptions of liberty share in common, but if so, we have been similarly incapable of discerning them.\u00a0 For this reason, those of us who love our liberty are much better off devoting our energies to nourishing and nurturing our <\/em>liberty\u2014a particular this <\/em>rather than an ever elusive universal abstraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once we grasp what we in some sense have always known, that the liberty to which we have always been committed is as complex and simple, as concrete and particular, as culturally and historically-specific as our own families, then and only then will we be able to recognize the extent to which we have been bedeviled by folly for generations.\u00a0 Our zeal for liberty impaired our vision as we mistook our abridgment<\/em> of our tradition of liberty for a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that, we were convinced, all legitimate accounts of liberty must satisfy.\u00a0 Yet it was this delusion, on our part, this inability to see the forest for the trees, that has encouraged us to indulge in fantasies of government-free \u201cstates of nature,\u201d American-style \u201cDemocracy\u201d in the Middle East, societies in which equality as a substantive condition of affairs would prevail, and societies in which people from every conceivable culture could come together and join hands around a few simple, \u201cself-evident\u201d propositions.\u00a0<\/p>\n It can\u2019t be stressed enough: American liberty is as culturally particular as apple pie itself.\u00a0 Let us appreciate it for what it is before it is too late.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published in The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The nature of the relationship between \u201cuniversals\u201d\u2014Humanity, Justice, Goodness, etc.\u2014and \u201cparticulars\u201d\u2014this human being, this instance of justice and that instance of goodness\u2014is a matter that philosophers have been busy at work trying to iron out for millennia.\u00a0 On a reasonably broad spectrum, there are two rival poles: the one is represented by Plato, the other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n