Дебатът за универсалиите в аналитичната метафизика
The debate on universals in analytical metaphysics

Summary/Abstract: The article is organized as follows: (1) a review of different conceptions of the nature and metaphysics and the typical criticisms of these; (2) an analysis f a relatively new ontological approach proposed by Donald Williams according to whom metaphysics should be interested in those features that are necessarily proper to every single thing; (3) in this relation, criteria of identity acquire a key importance as well as their derived techniques of counting conceived as determining the basic ontological categories; (4) it is demonstrated how these criteria seemingly testify as to the presence of two primary and mutually irreducible ontological categories – objects and properties; (5) the possibilities are considered that the theory of tropes offers which emphasizes the role of a third, ‘hybrid’ category; (6) a schematic attempt is made at reconstructing the history and prehistory of the theory of tropes, identifying their different reincarnations and the typical uses that have been correlated to them; (7) the exposition ends by a short and inexhaustive enumeration of other applications of the theory that have been developed in the last few decades and have thus contributed to its becoming a part of the standard toolkit of metaphysics within the analytic philosophical tradition.

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