July 6, 2011 24 Comments
It was common in Husserl’s era to encounter not only the skeptical relativism as espoused by the empircists, but also their concomitant nominalism. Husserl viewed nominalism as equally destructive to the project of pure logic as a foundation of the sciences, as he did the skepticism he so vehemently railed against. This is due to the fact that in order for science to operate coherently, it must have a pure, a priori foundation based upon ideal entities. In other words, logic itself, as grounding scientific discourse, must be grounded theoretically in an a prioristic theory of meanings and universals. The purpose of this paper is to present and defend Husserl’s arguments for universals and his critique of nominalism—which appear just as relevant today as did his critique of skeptical relativism.
Nominalism is the theory, arising in the Late Middle Ages, which opposed the ancient/traditional view that universals had some kind of “real” existence (whether mental or ontological). Nominalists posited instead that universals were merely names, arguing that only specific, individual things existed.1 Nominalism as an epistemic theory would achieve the upper hand following upon the Enlightenment and its philosophic notables Locke, Berkeley and Hume. By Husserl’s day (the early 20th century), nominalism was still the predominate view and, in Husserl’s estimation, called for a definitive refutation.