CONCEPTUALISM. – This is the doctrine that denies general ideas (universals) an objective correspondence in reality, asserting them as pure concepts or forms of the spirit.
The beginnings of c. can already be discerned in the doctrine of the Stoa, where the universal concept (κοινῷ ἔνναυσ), of undoubted practical importance, is a pure derivative of sensory impressions, almost their condensation in memory, to which no proper content corresponds in reality, beyond individual things.
In medieval philosophy, Abelard (v.) is credited with the explicit defense of c. In reality, however, Abelard intended rather to combat the external solutions given to the problem of universals by Roscellinus and William of Champeaux: against nominalism, according to which general ideas are ultimately nothing more than words, and realism, which grants them an independent consistency in reality, Abelard asserts that the universal exists essentially in the concept, without, however, denying in the nature of individual things that which the general idea expresses. For this reason, Abelard’s position is today generally interpreted in the sense of a moderate realism, or at least as an approach to it (cf. W. Windelband, Storia della filos., I, Italian translation by C. Dentice D'Accadia, Palermo-Milano 1937, p. 347).
Rigid c., which indeed in its further developments degenerates into nominalism, Occam (v.): the universal concept is nothing but an intentio or conceptio animae; nothing real corresponds to it in things; the generic and specific unity of the concept is a purely representational unity created by thought (Occam calls universal concepts fictiones) for the convenience of referring to the many, that is, to individuals, the only existing reality (In I Sent., 2, 8): more or less like the model that the architect forms in his imagination as a guide to external realization.
In modern philosophy, Kantian conception in truth resolves itself into c., although it proceeds from a new gnoseological-metaphysical basis. Universality and necessity, essential qualities of the concept, cannot in any way be derived from experience, but originate solely in thought. The categories, that is, the general modes according to which we think of objects, are pure original forms of the mind that are valid only for the subjective ordering and systematization of experience, and tell us nothing about reality in itself. The various modern forms of pragmatism and anti-intellectualism may be brought close to c., particularly the Bergsonian position which, owing to its particular conception of dynamic reality, denies the concept, stable in its representation of essence, the possibility of conforming to the fluid structure of the real. Absolute c., but in a metaphysical sense, may be attributed to Hegelian and neo-Hegelian transcendental idealism, which resolves all reality in the concrete concept. A final form of c. existentialism (v.), for which only the individual, the existent as such, has value: it does not wish to be leveled and lose itself in any system of concepts or universal models.
Without claiming to reduce all scientific knowledge to general ideas (for the concrete and analytical knowledge of individual reality, both material—that is, the world—and spiritual—that is, the soul—is rich, fruitful, and absolutely necessary), the value of conceptual knowledge is nevertheless unquestionably positive. That general ideas are not pure creations of thought, but that an objective foundation in the individual beings to which they refer corresponds to them, is proved not only by the fact that they arise in the intellect in close continuity and dependence upon the characteristics of reality given to us by sensory knowledge, whose transcendental or essential values they express, but also by the highly positive function they exercise in human knowledge, and principally in scientific knowledge. Not only philosophy, every philosophy that does not renounce itself, lives by universal concepts, but also science, which makes use of them, and successfully, in its deductions, predictions, and concrete applications, and which certainly cannot, throughout its grand systematic development, be reduced to a simple knowledge of thought and its logical forms (v. UNIVERSALISTI).