In July 1945, Rand remarked in a letter to Isabel Patterson: “I am reading a long, detailed history of philosophy. I’m reading Aristotle in person and a lot of other things. . . . It’s actually painful for me to read Plato . . . . But I must do it.” The editor of Letters of Ayn Rand identifies that history of philosophy as the one by B. A. G. Fuller. I have obtained this text History of Philosophy – Ancient, Medieval, and Modern in its second edition, which was issued in 1945.
Chapter XXV is “The Question of Universals.” Fuller focuses on this issue in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, on Roscellinus, Anselm, William of Champeaux, and Abelard. He summarizes the ultra-realism of Plato and the substantial-forms realism of Aristotle. It is common to characterize Roscellinus as a nominalist, but Fuller and others object to applying this classification to him. As Fuller understands him, Roscellinus held against Plato’s existence of universals apart from and prior to individual things, and he held against Aristotle’s existence of universals in and as part of individual things; he held universals exist only in the mind. That is not to say they are not real. Quite the contrary. They really do exist in the mind, and they exist there as universals. So Fuller classes Roscellinus as a type of realist about universals. He reserves nominalist for the later view that universals do not exist anywhere and that it is with mental images standing for classes of things that we think, not with universals.
Against Roscellinus, William of Champeaux advocated a kind of Platonic ultra-realism. Those two men were teachers of Abelard, who argued against both of their theories. Abelard argued that universals “exist at the same time ante res (as Ideas in the divine intellect), in rebus (as the common natures shared by individual substances) and post res (as the general concepts formed by human minds).”
Abelard a Moderate Realist. This doctrine, which took a middle course between the extreme positions of William of Champeaux and Roscellinus is sometimes called conceptualism. But conceptualism, like nominalism, is now regarded by many historians of philosophy as a term more properly applied to later teaching, and Abelard is classified by them as a moderate realist—much more “moderate,” needless to say, than Roscellinus. His view was later adopted, with some modifications, by Thomas Aquinas . . . . (376)
By the restrictive requirements for the classification nominalist mentioned by Fuller, I should say that Rand is not a nominalist. Specifically, her theory is not a version of what is now called resemblance nominalism. Any concept cast in her measurement-omission form of abstractions is a way of having abstract classes in mind (with words) without always requiring a mental image, exemplary or prototypical of the class. Such concepts are based on magnitude relations standing in the world. Basing such concepts on similarities in the world analyzable in terms of said magnitude relations bonds the concepts to something specific in the intended objects even if suspension of specific measure values and class membership (i.e., even if abstractness) is only in the mind. I now as ever think that Rand’s theory should not be classed a realism about universals and deserves the new name Objectivism about universals.
I'd like to add that Fuller's story of the road to nominalism from the kind of realism proposed by Roscellinus continues, on page 417, in the fourteenth century. He relays how in the thinkers Durand of Saint Pourcain (formerly a Thomist) and Peter Aureoli (formerly a Scotist) and William of Ockham the notion of abstract universal ideas is reduced to terms of sensory experience. "At the hands of this new teaching Universals as such simply vanished from human thinking as well as from every other form of existence." Although her theory is not a nominalist one, it would be not unreasonable to say that because she (i) replaced substantial forms with identities and (ii) replaced metaphysical essences with essential characteristic(s) alterable according to human state of knowledge about the dependency relations among things, Rand did away with universals. Fuller would ask whether her theory has us "abstract really general ideas from particular objects and entertain really universal concepts"? If yes, then her theory does not do away with universals by his lights. (See also my distinction for continued use of universals in Rand's theory: note [i] in post #1. )
Fuller's book was not one that Rand had simply checked from the public library and possessed only briefly. This book was in her own personal library. Nevertheless, it is questionable how much she returned to it after the 1945 reading, for further guidance in the history of philosophy. I say that because Fuller's presentation of Kant is extensive and excellent, and Rand's movement towards conception of Kant as an irrationalist, by the early '50's, and, by 1960 if not sooner, conceiving Kant's views as the root of irrationalism in subsequent philosophy is nowise a conception of Kant (a lopsided one concerning his content and his lines of influence) that she could get from Fuller.
(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 5/18, 7:29am)