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Updated: May 14, 2025
It is the old question whether the idea preceded or followed the reality, on which the whole Middle Ages broke their teeth, the question which separated and still separates philosophers into two camps,—the Realists and the Nominalists.
The dates of his birth and death and the place of his birth are alike doubtful. He may have been at Oxf., is said to have been a regent or prof. at Paris, and was a Franciscan. He was a man of extraordinary learning, and received the sobriquet of Doctor Subtilis. His great opponent was Thomas Aquinas, and schoolmen of the day were divided into Scotists and Thomists, or realists and nominalists.
Even during the middle age, the controversy between the Nominalists and Realists had an important bearing on this subject: so that from the whole history of Philosophy we derive the impression of its fundamental importance, an impression which is deepened and confirmed by the transcendent interest of the themes to which it has been applied.
Porphyry, in his Isagoge, approached so near to the true conception of essences, that only one step remained to be taken, but this step, so easy in appearance, was reserved for the Nominalists of modern times.
The philosopher thought his views on the subjectivity of the nominalists and the objectivity of the realists had at last been appreciated; but the discovery was merely this, that the name of a person who, according to the previously imperfect science of the genealogist, ought not to have existed then and there, was referred to in a letter from Spinoza, cited in defence of certain views upon the absolute.
In the course of this preliminary investigation into the import of Propositions, we examined the opinion of the Conceptualists, that a proposition is the expression of a relation between two ideas; and the doctrine of the Nominalists, that it is the expression of an agreement or disagreement between the meanings of two names.
And yet with Anselm and Roscelin the Scholastic age began. They were the founders of the Realists and the Nominalists, those two schools which divided the Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which will probably go on together, under different names, as long as men shall believe and doubt. But this subject, on which I have only entered, must be deferred to the next lecture.
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.
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.
It was therefore absolutely necessary that at a given moment man should become God, which could only be done upon the condition that God made Himself man. REALISTS; NOMINALISTS; CONCEPTUALISTS. It was in the time of St. Anselm that there arose the celebrated philosophic quarrel between the "realists, nominalists, and conceptualists."
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