Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/117

 NOMINALISM

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NOMINALISM

A. Exaggerated Realism holds that there are univer- sal concepts in the mind and universal things in na- ture. There is, therefore, a strict parallelism between the being in nature and the being in thought, since the external object is clothed with the same character of universality that we discover in the concept. This is a simple solution, but one that runs counter to the dic- tates of common sense.

B. Nominalism. — Exaggerated Realism invents a world of reality corresponding exactly to the attri- butes of the world of thought. Nominalism, on the contrary, models the concept on the external object, which it holds to be individual and particular. Nom- inalism consequently denies the existence of abstract and universal concepts, and refuses to admit that the intellect has the power of engendering them. What are called general ideas are only names, mere verbal designations, serving as labels for a collection of things or a series of particular events. Hence the term Nominalism. jSfeither Exaggerated Realism nor Nominalism finds any difficulty in establishing a correspondence between the thing in thought and the thing existing in nature, since, in different ways, they both postulate perfect harmony between the two. The real difficulty appears when we assign different attributes to the thing in nature and to the thing in thought; if we hold that the one is individual and the other universal. An antinomy then arises be- tween the world of reality and the world as repre- sented in the mind, and we are led to inquire how the general notion of flower conceived by the mind is ap- plicable to the particular and determinate flowers of nature.

C. Conceplualism admits the existence within us of abstract and universal concepts (whence its name), but it holds that we do not know whether or not the mental objects have any foundation outside our minds or whether in nature the individual objects possess distributively and each by itself the realities which we conceive as realized in each of them. The concepts have an ideal value; they have no real value, or at least we do not know whether they have a real value.

D. Moderate Realism., finally, declares that there are universal concepts representing faithfully realities that are not universal. " How can there be harmony between the former and the latter? The latter are particular, but we have the power of representing them to ourselves abstractly. Now the abstract type, when the intellect considers it reflectively and con- trasts it with the particular subjects in which it is realized or capable of being realized, is attributable indifferently to any and all of them. This applicabil- ity of the abstract type to the individuals is its univer- saUty" (Mercier, "Criteriologie", Louvain, 1906, p. 343).

II. The Principal Historical Forms of Nomi- nalism, REALiSiM, AND CoNCEPTDALiSM. — A. InGreek Philosophy. — The conciliation of the one and the many, the changing and the permanent, was a favour- ite problem with the Greeks ; it leads to the^ problem of universals. The typical affirmation of Exaggerated Realism, the most outspoken ever made, appears in Plato's philosophy; the real must possess the attri- butes of necessity, universality, unity, and immutabil- ity which are fountl in our intellectual representations. And as the sensible world contains only the contin- gent, the particular, the unstable, it follows that the real exists outside and above the sensible world. Plato calls it eiSos, idea. The idea is absolutely stable and exists by itself (^j-tus 6^; avri Ka8' avri), isolated (xwpio-Ta) from the phenomenal world, distinct from the Divine and the human intellect. Following logic- ally the directive principles of his Realism, Plato makes an idea-entity correspond to each of our ab- stract representations. Not only natural species (man, horse) but artificial products (bed), not only substances (man) but properties (white, just), rela-

tions (double, triple), and even negations and noth- ingness have a corresponding idea in the suprasensible world. "What makes one and one two, is a participa- tion of the dyad (Svas), and what makes one one is a participation of the monad (^iSras) in unity" (Pha?do, Ixix). The exaggerated Realism of Plato, investing the real being with the attributes of the being in thought, is the principal doctrine of his metaphysics.

Aristotle broke away from these exaggerated views of his master and formulated the main doctrines of Moderate Realism. The real is not, as Plato says, some vague entity of which the sensible world is only the shadow; it dwells in the midst of the sensible world. Individual substance (this man, that horse) alone has reality; it alone can exist. The universal is not a thing in itself; it is immanent in individuals and is multiplied in all the representatives of a class. As to the form of universality of our concepts (man, just), it is a product of our subjective consideration. The objects of our generic and specific representations can certainly be called substances (owiai), when they designate the fundamental reality (man) with the ac- cidental determinations (just, big) ; but these are Seirepai ovatai (second substances), and by that Aris- totle means precisely that this attribute of universal- ity which affects the substance as in thought does not belong to the substance (thing in itself) ; it is the out- come of our subjective elaboration. This theorem of Aristotle, which completes the metaphysics of Hera- clitus (denial of the permanent) by means of that of Parmenides (denial of change), is the antithesis of Platonism, and may be considered one of the finest pronouncements of Peripateticisra. It was through this wise doctrine that the Stagyrite exercised his as- cendency over all later thought.

After Aristotle Greek philosophy formulated a third answer to the problem of universals, Conceptu- alism. This solution appears in the teaching of the Stoics, which, as is known, ranks with Platonism and Aristoteleanism among the three original systems of the great philosophic age of the Greeks. Sensation is the principle of all knowledge, and thought is only a collec- tive sensation. Zeno compared sensation to an open hand with the fingers separated; experience or multi- ple sensation to the open hand with the fingers bent ; the general concept born of experience to the closed fist. Now, concepts, reduced to general sensations, have as their object, not the corporeal and external thing reached by the senses (ri/ix'"''"'), but the ^cktSv or the reality conceived; whether this has any real value we do not know. The Aristotelean School adopted Aristotelean Realism, but the neo-Platonists subscribed to the Platonic theory of ideas which they transformed into an emanationistic and monistic con- ception of the universe.

B. In the Philosophy of the Middle Ages. — For a long time it was thought that the problem of universals monopolized the attention of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, and that the dispute of the Nominalists and Realists absorbed all their energies. In reality that question, although prominent in the Middle Ages, was far from being the only one dealt with by these philosophers.

(1) From the commencement of the Middle Ages till the end of the 12th century.— It is impossible to classify the philosophers of the begiiuiiiig of tlie Mid- dle Ages exactly as Nominalists, Moderate and Exag- gerated Realists, or C^onccptualists. And the reason is that the problem of the ITnivcrsals is very complex. It not merely involves the metaphysics of the individ- ual and of "the universal, but also raises important questions in ideology — questions about the genesis and validitv of knowledge. But the earlier Scholas- tics, unskili(Ml in such delicate matters, did not per- ceive the.sc various aspect.^ of the i)roblem. It did not grow up spontaneously in the Middle Ages; it was be- queathed in a text of Porphyry's "Isagoge", a text