"Comming Nown": Abstraction vs. Generality in Joyce

Abstract: The opposition of abstraction and generality in James Joyce contrasts the collection of similar individuals into general categories with the abstraction of a quality from many individuals. In Finnegans Wake , G. W. F. Hegel, George Berkeley, and Benedict Spinoza appear as philosophers who favor generality over abstraction. The abstract noun that tends to dismiss the individual case is also contrasted with the common noun that encounters all kinds of individual, concrete things. This theme of coming down from the abstract to the concrete is developed through Joyce's engagements with Hegel's concrete universal, Ludwig Wittgenstein's concrete cases, and Galton's compound photographs.