REAL RELATIONS

We are happy to say that certain particulars exist and are real, and this lends credibility to the idea that basic attributes are real constituents of the world. The reason is that basic attributes inhere in particulars and are thought of as in some way constituents of particulars, contributing to their reality. Relations, on the other hand, seem to have a shadowy sort of existence; they seem to hang between particulars. Intuitively, it is difficult to regard relations as real constituents of the world.

According to Gottfried Martin this intuition found expression in mediaeval metaphysics. For Aquinas the being of an accident (i.e. an attribute) was a matter of its existing in an individual being “Esse accidentis est inesse” – for an accident, to be is to inhere: “A relation, considered as a real accident, would be an accident which stood so to speak with one foot in one substance and the other in another, and this contradicts the idea of an accident as inherent in a particular individual being.” This point of view leads to the doctrine that all relations are “relations of reason”, in other words that they are things produced by thought and that there are no such things as “real relations”.