United States or Yemen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This opinion was held by the ancient philosophers, and by their followers, with the exception of the Nominalists; but as the spirit of modern metaphysics, until a recent period, has been on the whole a Nominalist spirit, the notion of definitions of things has been to a certain extent in abeyance, still continuing, however, to breed confusion in logic, by its consequences indeed rather than by itself.
When I say Realist of course I mean Realist as opposed to Nominalist, and not Realist in the almost diametrically different sense of opposition to Idealist. They go through queer little processes of definition and generalisation and deduction with the completest belief in the validity of the intellectual instrument they are using.
But while it is compatible with a robust faith in the powers of the constructive intellect, personalism is beyond question a self-sufficient, independent, individualistic doctrine. When it is combined with a nominalist theory of knowledge, it naturally suggests that every man may and should live by the creed which bests suits his idiosyncrasies.
Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, Molinist, Jansenist, are only pseudonyms. There are no sects in geometry; one does not speak of a Euclidian, an Archimedean. When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise. Never has there been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at noon.
All of philosophy, all of metaphysics that is, seems to him to be a discussion of the relations of class and individual. The antagonism of the Nominalist and the Realist, the opposition of the One and the Many, the contrast of the Ideal and the Actual, all these oppositions express a certain structural and essential duality in the activity of the human mind.
Reasoning is nothing more than a series of relative 'suggestions of which the separate subjects are felt by us to be mutually related. Hence, too, arises his theory of generalisation. He is, he says, not a 'nominalist' but a 'conceptualist, and here, for once, agrees with Reid as against Stewart.
Schoolman, b. at Ockham, Surrey, studied at Oxf. and Paris, and became a Franciscan. As a schoolman he was a Nominalist and received the title of the Invincible Doctor. He attacked the abuses of the Church, and was imprisoned at Avignon, but escaped and spent the latter part of his life at Munich, maintaining to the last his controversies with the Church, and with the Realists.
He doubtless kindled a spirit of inquiry, while he sapped the foundation of Christianity and undermined faith. He was a nominalist; that is, he denied the existence of all eternal ideas, such as Plato and the early Fathers advocated. He is said to have even adduced the opinions of Pagan philosophers to prove the mysteries of revelation.
To the realist type of mind here as always I use "realist" in its proper sense as the opposite of nominalist to the old-fashioned, over-exact and over-accentuating type of mind, such ways of thinking seem vague and unsatisfying.
Address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies. Publication of the Second Series of Essays. Contents: The Poet. Experience. Character. Manners. Gifts. Nature. Politics. Nominalist and Realist. New England Reformers. Publication of Poems. Second Visit to England.
Word Of The Day