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Updated: May 14, 2025
The famous dispute between Nominalists and Realists would never have been heard of, if, instead of transferring the Platonic Ideas into a crude Latin phraseology, the spirit of Plato had been truly understood and appreciated.
The scholastic philosophy of the fourteenth century, the disputes between the Nominalists and the Realists, in which he took the part of the former, the principle that "entities are not to be multiplied except by necessity," or the "hypostatic existence of abstractions," have ceased to create any very keen interest in the minds of readers.
But we know that the process of thought is continuous in historic races, and that myth is gradually divested of its personality and assumes a more intellectual form in the mind. Thus the material Idea passed into an intellectual conception; that which first appeared in an objective and extrinsic form became subjective and intrinsic, a transition which was effected by the nominalists.
This way of thinking, we may observe, is of exactly the kind which the nominalists of the Middle Ages attributed to every conception formed by the human mind. In fact, the process of counting is a process of pure abstraction. The more differentiated are the things which we want to combine into a group through the process of counting, the further this abstraction has to go.
His genius, displaying the practical bent of his English mind, turning with weariness from the endless verbal discussions of the Nominalists and Realists, and recognizing the impossibility of solving the questions which divided the schools of Europe into two hostile camps, led him to the study of branches of knowledge that were held in little repute.
Christianity, in the hands of fearless and logical nominalists, would melt away, that is, what is peculiar in its mysterious dogmas. Its mysterious dogmas were the anchors of belief in ages of faith. It was these which animated the existence of such men as Augustine, Bernard, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas.
The Principium Contradictionis should therefore put off the ambitious phraseology which gives it the air of a fundamental antithesis pervading nature, and should be enunciated in the simpler form, that the same proposition can not at the same time be false and true. But I can go no further with the Nominalists; for I can not look upon this last as a merely verbal proposition.
The controversy between conservatives and reformers, still pending, finds its counterpart, in the history of philosophy, in the quarrel between realists and nominalists; it is almost useless to add that, on both sides, right and wrong are equal, and that the rivalry, narrowness, and intolerance of opinions have been the sole cause of the misunderstanding.
In any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made with safety to the sentiments which the language of the people expresses. Proverbs, words, and grammar-inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision than the wisest individual. In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had a good deal of reason. General ideas are essences.
Nor do we hold that an abstract idea is necessarily an unreality, or a mere negation; for, without reviving the controversy between the Nominalists and Realists, or pronouncing any decision on the intricate questions which that controversy involved, we may say, in general terms, that the idea of a circle, of a square, or of a triangle, is neither unreal nor negative, but a very positive, and, withal, intelligible thing.
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