This work is reprinted in John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899-1924, Vol. 3.

[INTRODUCTION] Like the terms 'dialectic', 'Aufhebung' (or 'sublation'), and 'Geist', the term 'concrete universal' has a distinctively Hegelian ring to it. But unlike these others, it is particularly associated with the British strand in Hegel's reception history, as having been brought to prominence by some of the central British Idealists. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that, as their star has waned, so too has any use of the term, while an appreciation of the problematic that lay behind it has seemingly (...) vanished: if the British Idealists get any sort of mention in a contemporary metaphysics book (which is rarely), it will be Bradley's view of relations or truth that is discussed, not their theory of universals, so that the term has a rather antique air, buried in the dusty volumes of Mind from the turn of the nineteenth century. This is not surprising: the episode known as British Idealism can appear to be a period that is lost to us, in its language, points of historical reference (Lotze, Sigwart, Jevons), and central preoccupations (the Absolute). Even while interest in Hegel continues to grow, interest in his Logic has grown more slowly than in the rest of his work, with Book III of the Logic remaining as the daunting peak of that challenging text - while it is here that the British Idealists focussed their attention and claimed to have uncovered that 'exotic' but 'vanished specimen', the concrete universal. Finally, as the trend of reading Hegel pushes ever further in a non-metaphysical direction, it might be thought that the future of the concrete universal is hardly likely to be brighter than its recent past - for it may seem hard to imagine how a conception championed by the British Idealists, who were apparently shameless in their metaphysical commitments, can find favour in these more austere and responsible times. In this paper, however, I want to make a case for holding that there is something enlightening to be found in how some of the British Idealists approached the 'concrete universal', both interpretatively and philosophically. At the interpretative level, I will argue that while not everything these Idealists are taken to mean by the term is properly to be found in Hegel, their work nonetheless relates to a crucial and genuine strand in Hegel's position, so that their discussion of this issue is an important moment in the reception history of his thought. At a philosophical level, I think that the question that concerned Hegel and these British Idealists retains much of its interest, as does their shared approach to it: namely, how far does our thought involve a mere abstraction from reality, and what are the metaphysical and epistemological implications if it turns out it does not? As such, I will suggest, taking seriously what these British Idealists have to say about the concrete universal can help us both in our understanding of Hegel, and in our appreciation of the contribution Hegel's position can make to our thinking on the issues that surround this topic. (shrink)

Ever since F. H. Bradley first formulated his famous regress argument philosophers have been hard at work trying to refute it. The argument fails, it has been suggested, either because its conclusion just does not follow from its premises, or it fails because one or more of its premises should be given up. In this paper, the Bradleyan argument, as well as some of the many and varied reactions it has received, is scrutinized.

What is the nature of dialectic according to Hegel? And what is achieved by its means? These are the main questions that John McTaggart seeks to answer in this work, first published in 1896. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Cambridge-educated philosopher and fellow of Trinity College enjoyed a prominent position within the circle of idealist philosophers, and was regarded as one of England's leading Hegel scholars. Although a proponent of the German philosopher's dialectical thinking in general, McTaggart (...) was not uncritical of Hegel's philosophy and objected to his application of abstract thought. In this work, McTaggart not only gives the reader a thorough introduction to Hegel's understanding of the dialectic method but also exposes a number of points on which he considers Hegel's teaching to be inaccurate: one of these is Hegel's insistence that evil is merely a delusion. (shrink)

With the possible exception of causation, disposition concepts are as prevalent in ordinary thought as any of the nomic concepts. Progress on their nature has been hard to come by. No doubt the difficulty of saying anything illuminating and suitably general about their nature is a function of their pervasiveness.

If a bit of perceptual behavior is a trope, so is any response to a stimulus, and so is the stimulus, and so therefore, more generally, is every effect and its cause. When we say that the sunlight caused the blackening of the film we assert a connection between two tropes; when we say that Sunlight in general causes Blackening in general, we assert a corresponding relation between the corresponding universals. Causation is often said to relate events, and generally speaking (...) any event is a trope: a smile, a sneeze, a scream, an election, a cold snap, a storm, a lightning flash, a conspiracy, perhaps a wave, and so on up to such big and important events that they have proper names, like the Passover and Lulu the H-bomb explosion. We have called a trope a "case" of its universal, while the universal is the "kind" of the trope, so it is no surprise that a medical "case" is a trope--in the sense, at any rate, in which a person is said to have a case of typhoid fever rather than to be a case of it. A high-school boy, uncoached, has assured me, "Of course there's such a thing as Redness--this pencil has a case of it." When a scientist reports a temperature or a velocity or a viscosity he is reporting a trope--not a universal, because it is a once-for-all occurrence, but not a concrete thing either, though doubtless a component of one. He is likely to call it an "aspect" of the thing or, preferably, a "state," and generally speaking a "state" of a thing or a nation is a trope. Recent developments in sub-atomic physics, a none too reliable oracle, suggest that an electron, e.g., just is an existent state, and that the common-sense philosophy of concreta here abdicates altogether in favor of the trope. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.