REALISM (from Low Lat. realis, appertaining to res, things, as opposed to ideas and imaginations)

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 941 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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REALISM (from Low Lat. realis, appertaining to res, things, as opposed to ideas and imaginations) , a philosophical

term

TERM

used in two opposite senses. The older of these is the scholastic

doctrine

DOCTRINE

, traceable back to Socrates, that universals have a more " real " existence than things. Universals are, in scholastic language, ante res, in rebus and post res. Behind all numerous types of chairs there is in the mind the ideal chair of which particular chairs are mere copies. In the most extreme form

realism

REALISM (from Low Lat. realis, appertaining to res, things, as opposed to ideas and imaginations)

denies that anything exists in any sense exceptuniversals. It is opposed to nominalism (q.v.) and conceptualism (q.v.). For the history of the

doctrine

DOCTRINE

, see

SCHOLASTICISM

SCHOLASTICISM

Realism

REALISM (from Low Lat. realis, appertaining to res, things, as opposed to ideas and imaginations)

in this sense has been called " an assertion of the rights of the subject " (cf. the Protagonean

maxim

MAXIM, SIR HIRAM STEVENS (184o- )

, " Man is the measure of all things "). The

modern

MODERN

application of the

term

TERM

is to the opposing doctrine that there is a reality apart from its presentation to consciousness. In this sense it is opposed to idealism (q.v.), whether the purely subjective or that more comprehensive idealism which makes subject and

object

OBJECT

mutually interdependent. In its crude form it is known as " Natural " or " Naive " Realism. It appears, however, in more complex forms, e:g. as Ideal Realism (or Real Idealism), which combines epistemological idealism with realism in meta-physics. Again, Kant distinguishes " empirical " realism, which maintains the existence of things in space independent of consciousness, from " transcendental " realism, which ascribes absolute reality to time and space.
In literature and art " realism " again is opposed to " ideal-ism " in various senses. The realist is (I) he who deliberately declines to select his subjects from the beautiful or harmonious, and, more especially, describes ugly things and brings out details of an unsavoury sort; (2) he who deals with individuals, not types; (3) most properly, he who strives to represent the facts exactly as they are.

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