Abstrakt
In the Aristotelian tradition, relations used to be understood as forms, inhering in one term called "subject" and making it directed to the other term, called "terminus". Such a kind of theory has several advantages.
First, it is not wedded to Platonism about universals, as it construes relations as particular properties of particulars. Second, it allows for realism and non-reductionism about relations: it does not deny that relations truly are out there in the world, and it does not attempt to reduce them something non-relational.
Third, it avoids the awkward notion of an accident inhering in more than one subject, or in no subject at all. However, the late scholastic discussion on the precise ontological nature of relations seems to have resulted in an impasse: none of the proposed theories of relations seems to be free of serious problems.
In my talk, I demonstrated the problems inherent in Thomistic, Scotistic, Suárez's and Arriaga's theory of relations and tentatively suggested some possibilities how the gist of Aristotelian realism about relations could be saved without sacrificing too much of its identity.