Full Idea
The scholastics treated it as a step in the right explanatory direction to analyze a relational statement of the form 'aRb' into two subject-predicate statements, attributing different relational predicates to a and to b.
Gist of Idea
Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata
Source
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1)
Book Reference
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J: 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz' [CUP 1999], p.65
A Reaction
The only alternative seems to be Russell's view of relations as pure universals, having a life of their own, quite apart from their relata. Or you could take them as properties of space, time (and powers?), external to the relata?