In this and the next chapter, I set out a general approach to group identification and then apply it to the case of genocide. In the current chapter, I will discuss and defend a nominalist approach to groups. In a sense nearly everyone today has nominalist sympathies, for hardly anyone believes that abstract terms such as “Armenians” have reality independent of the individual members. But there are various kinds of nominalism. It is only a “super-nominalist” supposedly like Hobbes who thinks that agreement about the meaning of some abstract terms could really only be established by a civil authority, and it is unclear that even Hobbes held this extreme view. I will spend the first half of this chapter rehearsing some of the most prominent views of nominalists in the late Medieval and early Modern periods. I will then spend the second half of the chapter providing a defense of a nominalist view of the constituents of groups.

In the first section of the chapter I will examine some of the views of the first nominalist philosopher, William of Ockham. In the second section I will discuss some of the views of the most prominent nominalist political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. In the third section I will build on the views of Ockham and Hobbes to construct my own account of the constituents of groups. In the fourth section of the chapter I will tackle the difficult question of how to determine which groups can be harmed.