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Abstract
Traditionally, the concept of universality has been governed by four dogmas: the principle of non-contradiction, the finitude of the concept, the separation of the principles of universality and particularity, and the appeal to the given. From these dogmas four paradoxes of self-reference follow: the problem of the missing differentia, the problem of participation, the problem of psychologism, and the problem of onto-theology. In this dissertation I show how these dogmas, as well as the paradoxes that follow from them, first arise in Ancient Greek philosophy, and how they continually re-appear throughout the history of Western philosophy. Hegel, in his Science of Logic, develops a novel concept of universality in which he defines universality as self-differentiation. Following the general historical exposition, I systematically reconstruct Hegels Logic of the Concept where he defines the concept as self-differentiation. In argue that self-differentiation undermines the classical dogmas of universality, and thereby solves the four paradoxes of self-differentiation.