It is in the twelfth century when the Universalism prevailed in France that Peter Abelard was born in 1072. Abelard grew up in a noble family with four siblings. As he grow, his father would have him study and later on according to Joel Feimer, He was later doing Liberal Arts as his father wanted him to take over his (the father) tittle which Abelard would later refuse to become. From then on, Abelard would move on with his life across France. Abelard would later have a strong sense of logic and even refuted the concept of Universalism. He explained that the pursuit of an ideal universal is not cohesive and offers a nominalist view to nullify the Universalism and for his theory of language.
Universalism has been very predominant theory of ideal. What most Universalists have in common is that they all conceptualized the Universe as being uppermost real. Plato's Universality can be explained as the seeking of that universal thing, the ideal form as compared to a reproduction. For example a reproduction of a square is no more than a copy of the square thus Plato would believe that there is an ideal form of the square somewhere. For Plato, Universals is the referent of the concrete and unchanging thing for all things.
Peter Abelard did not agree with the Universalists theory and argues them by using a nominalist style. William of Champeaux was the Universalist with whom he debated the most. William asserted, "It does not go against nature for it to be a pure thing if it were to happen that all its accidents were removed," (Guilfoy) leading to the example that two people like Aristotle and Plato are the same as they share the same material essence which is humanity but present individualistic accidents uniquely to each one of them. Peter Abelard argues that such Universalism is not a feature of the world but just a word and the individualistic accidents from both people are not so particular.
