ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that late Mediaeval realists explored many different ways to state and to defend their positions. It demonstrates the non-semantic nature of universality by means of arguments from language and meaning, from scientific knowledge, and from ontology. The chapter discusses some late Mediaeval arguments in favor of a realist account of universality. More precisely, four main issues are addressed: the nature of universality; arguments for non-semantic universality; the relation of universals to particulars; and propositional realism. A possible case of Mediaeval idealism is briefly considered, and some retrospective, contemporary views on Mediaeval realism are presented. The tricky issue of the relation between universals and particulars has also been addressed in many competing ways, by using concepts of identity and distinction, and of parts and wholes. The two extreme philosophical positions of Platonism and idealism (the other form of anti-realism) are also not absent from the late Mediaeval landscape.
