REALISM, a philosophical term used in two opposite senses. The older of these is the scholastic doctrine that universals have a more "real" existence than things. Universals are, in scholastic language, ante res, in rebus and post res. In the most extreme form realism denies that anything exists in any sense except uni versals. It is opposed to nominalism (q.v.) and conceptualism (q.v.). For the history of the doctrine, see SCHOLASTICISM. In this sense, realism has been called "an assertion of the rights of the subject," and some part of the teaching of Socrates concerns itself with the scholastic doctrine of realism. The modern applica tion of the term is to the opposing doctrine that there is a reality apart from its presentation to consciousness. In this sense it is opposed to idealism (q.v.), whether the purely subjective or that more comprehensive idealism which makes subject and object mu tually interdependent. In its crude form it is known as "Natural"
or "Naïve" Realism. It appears, however, in more complex forms, e.g., as Ideal Realism (or Real Idealism), which combines episte mological idealism with realism in metaphysics. Again, Kant distinguishes "empirical" realism, which maintains the existence of things in space independent of consciousness, from "transcen dental" realism, which ascribes absolute reality to time and space. (See PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY OF.) In literature and art "realism" again is opposed to "ideal ism" in various senses. The realist is (I) he who deliberately declines to select his subjects from the beautiful or harmonious, and, more especially, describes ugly things and brings out details of an unsavoury sort; (2) he who deals with individuals, not types; (3) most properly, he who strives to represent the facts exactly as they are.