“What on earth is a 'concrete universal'?"
— Said to be an annotation (undated)
by Robert M. Pirsig of A History of Philosophy,
by Frederick Copleston, Society of Jesus.
From Aaron Urbanczyk's 2005 review of Christ and Apollo by William Lynch, S.J., a book first published in 1960—
"Lynch's use of analogy vis-a-vis literature provides, in a sense, a philosophical basis to the theoretical paradox popularized by W. K. Wimsatt (1907-1975), which contends that literature is a sort of 'concrete universal.'"
The following figure has often been
offered in this journal as a symbol of Apollo—
Arguments that it is, rather, a symbol of Christ
may be left to the Society of Jesus.
One possible approach—
Urbanczyk's review says that
"Christianity offers the critic
a privileged ontological window…."
"The world was warm and white when I was born:
Beyond the windowpane the world was white,
A glaring whiteness in a leaded frame,
Yet warm as in the hearth and heart of light."