A History of Philosophy in EpitomeSchwegler, Albert
Philosophy
A History of Philosophy in Epitome
Schwegler, Albert
Philosophy -- History
oneness of faith and knowledge, had been constantly their fundamental
premise; but this premise fell away, and the whole basis of their
metaphysics was given up in principle, the moment Duns Scotus placed the
problem of theology in the practical. When the practical and the
theoretical became divided, and still more when thought and being were
separated by Nominalism (_cf._ 3), philosophy broke loose from theology
and knowledge from faith; knowledge assumed its position above faith and
above authority (modern philosophy), and the religious consciousness
broke with the traditional dogma (the Reformation).
3. NOMINALISM AND REALISM.—Hand in hand with the whole development of
Scholasticism, there was developed the opposition between Nominalism and
Realism, an opposition whose origin is to be found in the relation of
Scholasticism to the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. The
Nominalists were those who held that the conceptions of the universal
(the universalia) were simple names, _flatus vocis_, representations
without content and without reality. According to them there are no
universal conceptions, no species, no class; every thing which is,
exists only as separate in its pure individuality; there is, therefore,
no pure thinking, but only a representation and sensuous perception. The
Realists, on the other hand, taking pattern from Plato, held fast to the
objective reality of the universals (_universalia ante rem_). These
opposite directions appeared first between _Roscellinus_, who took the
side of Nominalism, and _Anselm_, who advocated the Realistic theory,
and it is seen from this time through the whole period of Scholasticism,
though from the age of _Abelard_ (born 1079) a middle view, which was
both Nominalistic and Realistic, held with some slight modifications the
prominent place (_universalia in re_). According to this view the
universal is only something thought and represented, though as such it
is not simply a product of the representing consciousness, but has also
its objective reality in objects themselves, from which it was argued we
could not abstract it if it were not essentially contained in them. This
identity of thought and being, is the fundamental premise on which the
whole dialectic course of the Scholastics rests. All their arguments are
founded on the claim, that that which has been syllogistically proved is
in reality the same as in logical thinking. If this premise is
overthrown, so falls with it the whole basis of Scholasticism; and there
remains nothing more for the thinker to do, who has gone astray in his
objectivity, but to fall back upon himself. This self-dissolution of
Scholasticism actually appears with _William of Occam_ (died 1347), the
most influential reviver of that Nominalism which had been so mighty in
the beginning of Scholasticism, but which now, more victorious against a
decaying than then against a rising form of culture, plucked away its
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