NOMINALISM. - A philosophical trend that denies the existence of general concepts, or at least denies that they correspond to a proper real content. The term (Nominales) is connected with the first affirmation, in the 9th century, of the *sententia vocum*, but appears explicitly only in the 13th century and becomes common, after Ockham (v.), to indicate his school. In modern philosophy it is referred mainly to English empiricism. Historically, nominalism embraces therefore different positions (including some expressions of Greek philosophy) whose characteristics must be kept in mind when attempting an essential definition of nominalism. In general, it may be described as the affirmation of the absolute singularity and concreteness of reality: to general ideas, even if they exist, there corresponds in actual reality nothing universal (essence, form), but only a collection or aggregate of individuals. Once a proper content is denied to the general idea, nominalism, in its rigorous expression, logically arrives at the negation of the concept itself: the general idea is in reality an illusion; of what is general there is only the name to which is tied in the mind a more or less determined sensible representation, and which is referred to a whole collection of individuals, similar in some fundamental aspects. It is understood, consequently, the importance attributed by nominalism to language (v.) understood not only as expression and manifestation, but also as reason and instrument of universal human knowledge. What is affirmed of the concept is extended to the judgment: “man is mortal” means “all human individuals are mortal.”
Later, the derivations of nominalism will be indicated. Here it must first be noted its extension to the epistemological field. “Scientific” nominalism is the tendency to regard science not as objective and universal knowledge, but as a simple conventional or symbolic interpretation of reality, or as an instrument for successfully ordering reality to human practical ends: a therefore pragmatic, not theoretical, conception of science (scientific positivism; cf. H. Poincaré, *La science et l'hypothèse*, Paris 1902, Introduction).
Nominalism is to be understood not as a pure gnoseological position, but also as a particular conception of reality. It is the negation of ontological principles and values that transcend pure experience and are posited, in reality, as reasons for the intelligibility, universality, and constancy of experience itself. Nominalism, in its rigorous expression, is therefore linked to empiricism and positivism (v.).
Distinct from modern empiristic nominalism, since Ockham preserves the substantial distinction between thought and sensation (De Wulf, op. cit., III, p. 39; cf. I, p. 143). And yet Ockham’s position prefigured modern nominalism, in that it was no longer merely a logical solution to the problem of universals, but tended, with the overvaluation of individual reality and intuitive knowledge, to deny the value of abstract knowledge in general. The *venerabilis Inceptor* of the *invictissima secta nominalium* went in fact beyond the negation of *species*, of the *principium individualitatis*, of the active intellect, and of other analogous metaphysical values defended by 13th-century scholastics. Once concepts were posited as *fictiones*, their invalidity and constitutional inability to grasp the structure of reality followed. If the concept of cause is a *figmentum*, it does not serve to demonstrate the existence of God (Quodl., I, q. 1; II, q. 1; and I Sent., dist. 2, q. 5), nor the freedom and immortality of the soul. And if ethical-legal concepts are also *fictiones*, it follows that the entire moral order, no longer able to be founded on the metaphysical values of being, depends on the will of God, known through Revelation (voluntarism, fideism). In the strictly theological field, the denied distinction of “habits,” accidents, and relations from the concrete substantial reality of the individual proved particularly dangerous in the doctrine of Grace and in the Trinitarian doctrine; and the absolute identity of the individuality of God excluded any possible distinction in Him of perfections, attributes, relations, and consequently also a valid conceptual cognition of the divine being.
Ockhamism spread, with varying fortunes, throughout the 14th–15th centuries. It was particularly combated in Paris, until the Edict of Louis XI (1474) that prohibited the teaching in that University of the philosophy of the Nominales or Terministae; the Edict having been abrogated in 1481, the nominalist school took on new vigor. Among the followers of Ockham are to be remembered an anonymous writer of the second half of the 14th century, who in the *Quaestio de universalis secundum viam et doctrinam G. de Ockam* affirmed: “Universalia... sunt tantum quidam termini mentales seu intentiones vel conceptus si sunt in mente, vel sunt termini vocales et prolati si sunt in voce, vel sunt termini scripti si scribantur” (ed. M. Grabmann, Münster 1930, p. 27). Among the other principal representatives of terminism are Johannes de Mirecourt (first half of the 14th century), Adam Wodeham (d. 1358), Gregory of Rimini (d. 1358), Walter Burley (lecturer at the University of Vienna in 1397), Marsilius of Inghen (d. 1396), John Buridan (d. ca. 1360), Nicole Oresme (d. 1382), Albert of Saxony (d. 1390; V. under these headwords). The last of the authors indicated, however, had predominantly scientific aims, foreshadowing, with their original speculations and physical theories, some of the most important discoveries of science in the 16th century. In the more strictly theological-religious field, Ockhamism was not without influence on the rise of Protestantism (v.). The nominalist trend, even if respectful of Church teaching, was in force, particularly with the doctrines of Gabriel Biel (ca. 1415–1495), at the University of Erfurt where Luther (v.) was formed, as well as in the general studies of the Augustinian Order (cf. H. Grisar, *M. Luther*, Freiburg in Br. 1927, chap. 1, § 3; P. Vigneaux, *Luther commentateur des Sent.*, Paris 1935, pp. 45–86).
Occamism thus links, in its double meaning—scientific-philosophical and theological—with modern thought, of which the nominalist tendency, reinforced by the new methodology of the sciences (Bacon, Galileo) and other historical contingencies, became one of the fundamental directives. The first rigorous expression of modern nominalism is found in English empiricism. BERGER, ELIE (v.), “the opinion that the mind has the power to fabricate abstract ideas or notions of things has had a great part in entangling and confusing speculation... and has given rise to innumerable errors and difficulties in almost every part of knowledge” (*Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge*, Italian trans. by G. Papini, Bari 1925, Introd., p. 7). An idea is always particular, and “becomes general when it is made to represent—that is, to stand in place of—all other particular ideas of the same kind” (ibid., p. 13). Consequently, “general ideas are fictions and inventions of the mind” (ibid.) and their source must be sought in language: “if there had been no language or universal signs, one would never have thought of abstraction” (ibid., pp. 16–17). In Berkeley, who protested that he did not absolutely deny general ideas but only abstract ideas (ibid., p. 12), nominalism was contained, in its logical consequences, within a spiritualistic conception—though not critically grounded—of man and God.
In Hume, who explicitly refers to Berkeley (*Treatise on Human Nature*, Part I, Section 7), once every spiritualistic presupposition has fallen away, nominalism is driven to its sceptical and anti-metaphysical conclusion. The general idea is already excluded by the fundamental assertion of human gnoseology that “all ideas are derived from impressions and are nothing but copies and representations of them” (op. cit., Part I, Section 7, Italian trans. by A. Carlini, Bari 1926, p. 37). Sensible impressions are necessarily individual, “determined in their degrees both of quantity and quality” (ibid., pp. 36–37). Abstract ideas are therefore themselves individual and “become general when united with a general term, that is, a term which, through habitual association, stands in relation to many other particular ideas and readily recalls them to the imagination” (ibid., p. 41). In Hume, then, the concept is completely resolved into sensible image: there are in the mind only individual representations (the general idea is absurd, just as general reality is absurd: ibid., p. 37), externally linked by a term and a psychological habit; “the word awakens an individual idea, and with it a certain habit; and this habit produces every other individual idea, according as occasion requires” (ibid., p. 39). Once the unity and autonomy of the concept are dissolved into the phenomenal-empirical multiplicity of sensations, every foundation for the theoretical constructions of thought is removed. Hume does not hesitate to conclude that the certainty of human knowledge is confined within the limits of experience (empiricism).
Nominalism in its empiricist form is taken up by sensism (Condillac) and by representatives of classical positivism (A. Comte, H. Taine, H. Spencer, J. Stuart Mill). On psychological grounds it is defended by J. F. Fries, H. Helmholtz, W. Wundt, and Th. Ziehen. Of nominalist inspiration is the materialism of Feuerbach (only the sensible individual is truly real; the universal or the Hegelian Idea is illusion: nature in its alterity), the left-wing existentialism (only the existent and its individual situation in time are real—the concept and universality are the loss of the individual), and finally logical positivism (v.), which in some of its expressions reduces the value of the concept to pure verbal meaning. Nominalism is thus associated with some of the most powerful currents of contemporary thought, both expression and cause of the heightened crisis to which metaphysics has come.
In the history of philosophical thought, nominalism has had a positive significance as a reminder to control the abstractive activity of the intellect and to be conscious of its limits and possible deviations, when it tends to attribute to what is merely a form or mode of thought the significance of reality. The emphasis placed on the individuality of the real also has a clear justification in the conditions of concreteness and singular ontological status that a pluralistic conception cannot but recognize in being, and particularly in the person (v.). In this sense, nominalism—whether that of the fourteenth century or the modern—has contributed, as few other trends of thought have, to a more valid knowledge of reality, both natural and spiritual. In its reaction against scholastic abstractism, it sought truth and the meaning of the concrete, accentuating the value of intuition and the immediacy of experience, thereby fostering new directions in mysticism, politics (Giovanni da Gianduno, Marsilio of Padua [v.]), and the sciences. The fruitful methodological norms of modern science—in particular the physical sciences but also the spiritual—are indeed largely due to the theoretical demands of nominalism. Yet the negative aspect of nominalism cannot be ignored, evident in its denial of the value of the universal. “The nominalist solution is a naturalistic and materialistic one; which, by resolving reality into individuals, tends to suppress their intelligibility, denying the absolute value of those universals by which they are intelligible. And it thus tends to deny all value to thought, which, set over against these individuals that alone are real, can be nothing other than nothing” (G. Gentile, *Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro*, 5th ed., Florence 1938, ch. 6, p. 69). The actualist condemnation proceeds, it is true, from the presupposition of the supreme unity and concreteness of thought, in whose dialectic the individualities are posited and dissolved. From such a presupposition one may abstract; but the critique remains equally valid. The concept and universality are the very condition of thought: nominalism, which suppresses the concept or, what is the same, deprives it of its proper content, ultimately comes to deny thought in what is its essential value: its meaning as reason and expression of being. In nominalism, the intellect is certainly recognized as having the function of systematizing the data of experience, ordering individuals into classes and systems; but since every value transcending their empirical reality is excluded from the individuals themselves, the intellect is also unable to understand on a plane of absolute intelligibility. The individual, as given in human experience, is existence, fact, history; if there are no principles, reasons, or moments of unity within the individuals that insert them into the universal and the necessary, it is impossible to assign them a meaning: being is fragmented and dispersed into pure empirical multiplicity, without reason, unity, or end. Nominalism, even when it does not explicitly affirm it, precludes a metaphysical conception of the world and of being, and therefore also a conception of man and of life that is not the surrender of thought and action to history as pure fact and becoming in time. It is clear that in the nominalist perspective, neither soul, nor good, nor finality, nor God are susceptible of a valid rational foundation: these values, when not felt, are denied, consigned to the sphere of sentiment and faith. Agnosticism, fideism, pragmatism (v.) in every order of values that tends to transcend experience—religious, ethical, juridical, pedagogical, social, political—are therefore the logical and historical terminus of nominalism.
The nominalist errs in not understanding that if the universal abstracted from the particular is pure abstraction, so too is the individual—since it lacks foundation and principle—abstract when severed from the universal. Reality can only be the concreteness of individuality and universality: individuality as the reason and bearer of existence and action; universality as the reason for the ontological structure of every being as a degree and participation in Being and intelligibility.