P
petra48
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Could someone recommend some good books and articles on the nominalist controversy? From my understanding the realists argued that, terms refereed to real Forms, and had roots in Neo-Platonist conception of the forms, while the nominalists were more thoroughly Aristotelean in saying that the forms were simply the sum total of individual concrete examples. So the “universal” for cat would just be the common empirical features all cats share in common. The nominalists of course went far beyond Aristotle.
Did the Church ever have an official position on this? I’ve read that the Nominalist position was considered dangerous since if taken to its logical extreme it would deny the most important universal of all- God, as well as any sense of Natural Law.
Did the Church ever have an official position on this? I’ve read that the Nominalist position was considered dangerous since if taken to its logical extreme it would deny the most important universal of all- God, as well as any sense of Natural Law.