1. Whether the Moderate Realism of Aquinas is a Better Approach to Understanding the World Around Us than Ockham’s Nominalism

2. Introduction
The problem of universals: Do essences exist? Are they real?
The interdependence between epistemology and metaphysics
The denial of essences in Ockham’s nominalism and its effects in all areas of philosophy
Metaphysics
Logic
Epistemology
Anthropology
Ethics
Politics

3. Real Distinction Between Essence and Existence in Aquinas’s Moderate Realism
The real difference in God’s mode of being from all other being
Being is composed of essence and existence for created being
In God essence and existence are one
Existence is an act
Created things participate in their act of existence which they receive from God’s creating act
Essence receives and limits existence in created things
What is substance? Operation follows upon being

4. Are Essences Real?
Plato called them forms or ideas and believed they existed in “another world”
“Two worlds” in the Extreme Realism of Plato
Concrete world we know through our senses
Forms world through which we know concepts
Aquinas’s moderate realism says one world
Things exist as particulars
Universal concepts are real abstracted forms of substances
Nominalism is the opposite of Extreme Realism

5. Nominalism Pure Nominalism says universals don’t exist
William of Ockham: “… universals are not things other than names”
Denial of essences in Nominalism
No basis in nature for the similarity in things outside the mind
Denial of universals in language
Conceptualism (a milder form of nominalism) admits universal in the mind but denies essences or any natural basis of similarity of things outside the mind

6. Ockham’s Conceptualism
Concepts are mere groupings of things performed mechanistically by the mind
Words are signs signifying the mental concepts
Signs don’t communicate similarity in nature because there is no basis for the similarity outside the mind
Being is equivocal – the being of each thing is in every way different from the being of another thing
Being for Aquinas is analogical – each being is similar but different from every other being
Metaphysics is the key to understanding the world around us

7. The Failure of Ockham’s Nominalism
If all trees are different, how can we call them all trees?
A self-contradiction by using terms we deny
Signification of a universal concept by means of a sign, which is an image or picture cannot communicate reality reliably
The denial of real natural classes without a metaphysical basis for their assortment into classes in the mind
A failure to account for the similarity in things outside the mind

8. Terms Are Either: Univocal – has one and only one meaning
In “I ate an apple” ate and apple are univocal
Equivocal – has two or more quite different meanings
When I say “the river has two banks” and “the town has two banks” banks is used equivocally
Analogical – has two or more meanings that are:
Partly the same and partly different
Related to each other
When I say “a good man gave his good dog a good meal” the term good is used analogically

9. Aquinas’s View of Nature and Creation: the Analogy of Being
What does Aquinas mean by the term natural?
Natural kinds
Caused by God supernaturally
The world is a single co-participate organized in relation to one another
Natural things have an origin and end
God possesses every being possible in His self- knowledge
God is All Perfections: Goodness, Beauty, Truth…
For example, The Goodness in God is analogically the goodness in natural things

10. The Problem of the One and the Many
“How can that which is universal in the mind represent what is not universal in reality?
Things exist as particulars, however they exist as composites of form and matter.
Essential forms are received in matter
Essence receives and limits existence
The first act of the intellect: understanding
Substantial forms are received in the senses and an intelligible species is abstracted by the intellect
The intelligible species is that by which the active intellect knows universal concepts of “things in themselves”

11. Duns Scotus’s Influence on Ockham
Duns Scotus believes being is univocal
“God and creation are situated within one extension of being with God being more powerful in every respect”1
Denies Aquinas’s analogy of being
Denies analogical use of language, language is univocal
Consequently, God’s supernatural influence, grace, is viewed outside the extension of univocal being and super-added
Effects split between faith and reason, philosophy and theology…pushing religion to the margins of humanism
Voluntarism is a result of nominalism and denies natural law
Ockham goes one step further and believes being is equivocal – there is no similarity in particulars outside the mind
1 Joel Garver, “Nominalism and the Modern”,

12. Deconstruction of Moderate Realism
Depends on the denial of essences and functionality of substances - Operatio Sequitor Esse or “Operation follows upon being”
Conceptualist path in Locke and Kant - Idealism
Nominalist path in Hume and Hobbes – Empiricism
Both paths deny:
Causality
Teleology
Natural Law
The natural “fallacy” in Hume – an “ought” cannot be determined from an “is”
Denial of a discernible scale of natural values prevents moral norms that are objective, universal and intelligible

13. All Areas of Philosophy Depend Upon a Legitimate Metaphysics
Area of Philosophy
Moderate Realism
Nominalism
Metaphysics
Universals are real and individuals are real. Universals are the forms of individual entities
Universals are not objectively real.
Epistemology
Reason knows reality by abstraction from senses
Reason is deceptive when it goes beyond sensation
Anthropology
Man is composed of a soul/form + body
Man is composed of a body + brain
Ethics
Supreme good for man is happiness practicing good through virtue
Supreme good is unknowable
Politics
Goal of society is enabling good through virtue balancing common with private good
Goal of society is to do well: focus on self and individual property, not virtue
Source: Peter Kreeft, Socratic Logic, South Bend, Indiana, St. Augustine’s Press, 2004, p. 360.