ABSTRACT
The traditional exaltation of the categories is in terms of a realism of universals; the categories are universals and as such belong to a logical realm superior to the existential order of events in space and time. Furthermore, the categories are at the very top of the hierarchy of universals; they not only qualify for admission to the higher order of being, the realm of universals, but they occupy the dominating position within that realm. A category may be defined in realistic terms as an ultimate and irreducible universal, a universal which can neither be resolved into nor subsumed under a higher universal. The realistic definition of category tends to remove the categories from the existential world and to destroy their commerce with other conceptions of common sense, science, and philosophy. The only way to bring the categories down to earth is to repudiate realism and to embrace some form of nominalism or conceptualism. The crudity of the older forms of nominalism and conceptualism rendered them unequal to the exacting requirements of a philosophical theory of the categories, but present-day conceptualism, availing itself of the results of psychological and epistemological analysis, is in a position to do justice by the categories on the plane of factuality.
