nLab
universal construction

The universal constructions in category theory include

Each of these may be defined by requiring it to satisfy a universal property.

In good cases, every single one of these is a special case of every other, so somehow one single concept here comes to us with many different faces.

Some or all of these have analogs in higher category theory, notably in 2-category theory and (∞,1)-category theory:

Revised on September 29, 2012 20:08:19 by Urs Schreiber (82.113.98.232)