Nnadiebube Journal of Philosophy

A cursory glance at the historical evolution of metaphysics reveals that thinkers have had to grapple with major problems bordering on conceptualization, which has turned out to be perennial problems which cannot be solved once and for all, as in, in a dogmatic manner. It is, therefore, not surprising that various thinkers at the different stages of the development of metaphysics have had to deal with same old issues, however, with new perspectives of approaches. Such problems include the problem of substance and accidents, being, evil, unity and diversity, change and permanence, causality, mind and body interaction, universal and particular, etc. The present work has studied the problem of universal and particular from an IgboAfrican perspective. And the concept of universal was discussed within the context of what particular things have in common, which means that universals are sometimes abstract and substantiated by particular things as in the case of three tables in a room that share the quality of ‘tableness’. This also implies that while universals are abstract, that particulars are concrete realities, however, not in all cases. Using the binoculars of Igwebuike philosophical (holistic) approach to interpret the dynamics of universal and particular, which represents the framework within which the African interprets and understands his universe, this work discovered that between the universal and the particular in Igbo-African universe, there is not duality in the sense of two poles set apart. Unlike Plato’s world of forms that understands the universal as the superior of the particular, the African perspective understands the two as complementary, that is, as each expressing the other.

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