For the authors of the new book All Things Shining —

See the discussions of "concrete universals" in James Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology  and in Donald Phillip Verene's Vico and Joyce —

The index to All Things Shining  contains no entries for Hillman (or his mentor Jung), Verene, Joyce, Vico, or the word "universal."

It does, however, contain four references to an example  of a universal —

whiteness, 161, 169-173, 175, 178

See also "whiteness" in this  journal.

“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."

— Delmore Schwartz

The White Itself

David Ellerman has written that

"The notion of a concrete universal occurred in Plato's Theory of Forms [Malcolm 1991]."

A check shows that Malcolm indeed discussed this notion ("the Form as an Ideal Individual"), but not under the name "concrete universal."

See Plato on the Self-Predication of Forms, by John Malcolm, Oxford U. Press, 1991.

From the publisher's summary:

"Malcolm…. shows that the middle dialogues do indeed take Forms to be both universals and paradigms…. He shows that Plato's concern to explain how the truths of mathematics can indeed be true played an important role in his postulation of the Form as an Ideal Individual."

Ellerman also cites another discussion of Plato published by Oxford:

For a literary context, see W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., "The Structure of the Concrete Universal," Ch. 6 in Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.

Other uses of the phrase "concrete universal"– Hegelian and/or theological– seem rather distant from the concerns of Plato and Wimsatt, and are best left to debates between Marxists and Catholics. (My own sympathies are with the Catholics.)

Two views of "the white itself" —

 "So did God cause the big bang?
 Overcome by metaphysical lassitude,
 I finally reach over to my bookshelf
 for The Devil's Bible.
 Turning to Genesis I read:
 'In the beginning
 there was nothing.
 And God said,
 'Let there be light!'
 And there was still nothing,
 but now you could see it.'"
 
 -- Jim Holt, Big-Bang Theology,
    Slate's "High Concept" department 

 

  

"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."

-- Delmore Schwartz

“In chapters 19 and 20 of LILA there is a discussion about the possibility of making Zen and the Art into a movie. It opens with a scene where Robert Redford, who ‘really would like to have the film rights,’ comes to meet and negotiate with Phaedrus in his New York City hotel room. Phaedrus tells the famous actor that he can have the rights to the book, but maybe that’s just because he’s star-struck and doesn’t like to haggle. Under his excitement, Phaedrus has a bad feeling about it. He tells us that he’s been warned by several different people not to allow such a film to be made. Even Redford warned him not to do it. So what’s the problem? As it’s put at the end of that discussion, ‘Films are social media; his book was largely intellectual. That was the center of the problem.'”

— David Buchanan at robertpirsig.org

“The insight is constituted precisely by ‘seeing’ the idea in the image, the intelligible in the sensible, the universal in the particular, the abstract in the concrete.”

— Fr. Brian Cronin‘s Foundations of Philosophy, Ch. 2, “Identifying Direct Insights,” quoted in Ideas and Art

See also Smiles of a Summer Evening, the current issue of TIME, the time of this entry (7:20:11 PM ET), and Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.

Rosalind Krauss
in "Grids," 1979:

"If we open any tract– Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World, for instance– we will find that Mondrian and Malevich are not discussing canvas or pigment or graphite or any other form of matter.  They are talking about Being or Mind or Spirit.  From their point of view, the grid is a staircase to the Universal, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete.

Or, to take a more up-to-date example…."

"He was looking at
the nine engravings
and at the circle,
checking strange
correspondences
between them."
— The Club Dumas,1993

"And it's whispered that soon
if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us
to reason."
— Robert Plant,1971

The nine engravings of
The Club Dumas
(filmed as "The Ninth Gate")
are perhaps more an example
of the concrete than of the
universal.

An example of the universal*–
or, according to Krauss, a
"staircase" to the universal–
is the ninefold square:

"This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason…."
— John Outram, architect    

For more on the field
of reason, see
Log24, Oct. 9, 2006.

A reasonable set of
"strange correspondences"
in the garden of Apollo
has been provided by Ezra Brown
in a mathematical essay (pdf).

Unreason is, of course,
more popular.

* The ninefold square is perhaps a "concrete universal" in the sense of Hegel:

"Two determinations found in all philosophy are the concretion of the Idea and the presence of the spirit in the same; my content must at the same time be something concrete, present. This concrete was termed Reason, and for it the more noble of those men contended with the greatest enthusiasm and warmth. Thought was raised like a standard among the nations, liberty of conviction and of conscience in me. They said to mankind, 'In this sign thou shalt conquer,' for they had before their eyes what had been done in the name of the cross alone, what had been made a matter of faith and law and religion– they saw how the sign of the cross had been degraded."

— Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, "Idea of a Concrete Universal Unity"

"For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross."
— Thomas Pynchon