I. Concept

The term “nominalism” is primarily related to a discussion that belongs specifically to the medieval period in philosophy. In contrast with realism, the nominalist position is that what gives meaning to a concept does not consist in a “real” being antecedent to thought, but is a product of perception, and thus a “name.” The source and starting-point of this difference between nominalism and realism, which determined the universals controversy in the Middle Ages, was Boethius’s commentar…