Realism definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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American Heritage Dictionary (4)

noun An inclination toward literal truth and pragmatism.
noun The representation in art or literature of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are, without idealization or presentation in abstract form.
noun Philosophy The scholastic doctrine, opposed to nominalism, that universals exist independently of their being thought.

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Century Dictionary (5)

The doctrine of the realist, in any of the senses of that word. See especially realist, n., 1. (1) Extreme realism taught that universals were substances or things, existing independently of and separately from particulars. This was the essence of Plato's theory of ideas. … (2) Moderate realism also taught that universals were substances, but only as dependent upon and inseparable from individuals, in which each inhered: that is, each universal inhered in each of the particulars ranged under it. This was the theory of Aristotle, who held that the τόδε τι or individual thing was the first essence, while universals were only second essences, real in a less complete sense than first essences. He thus reversed the Platonic doctrine, which attributed the fullest reality to universals only, and a merely participative reality to individuals. … (3) Extreme nominalism taught that universals had no substantive or objective existence at all, but were merely empty names or words. [See nominalism.] (4) Moderate nominalism or conceptualism taught that universals have no substantive existence at all, but yet are more than mere names signifying nothing; and that they exist really, though only subjectively, as concepts in the mind, of which names are the vocal symbols. … (5) [The medieval schoolmen] Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and others fused all these views into one, and taught that universals exist in a threefold manner: universalia ante rem, as thoughts in the mind of God; universalia in re, as the essence [quiddity] of things, according to Aristotle; and universalia post rem, as concepts in the sense of moderate nominalism. This is to-day the orthodox philosophy of the Catholic Church, as opposed to the prevailingly exclusive conceptualism of the Protestant world … In contrast with all the views above presented, another and sixth view will now be stated. … (6) Relationism or scientific realism teaches that universals, or genera and species, are, first, objective relations of existence among objectively existing things; secondly, subjective concepts of these relations, determined in the mind by the relations themselves; and thirdly, names representative both of the relations and of the concepts, and applicable alike to both. This is the view logically implied in all scientific classifications of natural objects, regarded as objects of real scientific knowledge. F. E. Abbot, Scientific Theism, Int.
In literature and art, the representation of what is real in fact; the effort to exhibit the literal reality and unvarnished truth of things; treatment of characters, objects, scenes, events, circumstances, etc., according to actual truth or appearance, or to intrinsic probability, without selection or preference over the ugly of what is beautiful or admirable: opposed to idealism and romanticism. Compare naturalism. I wish the reader particularly to observe, throughout all these works of Tintoret, the distinction of the imaginative verity from falsehood on the one hand, and from realism on the other. Ruskin, Modern Painters, III. ii. 3. A far fuller measure of the ease and grace and life of the realism which Giotto had taught. D. G. Mitchell, Bound Together, ii. By realism I mean simply the observation of things as they are, the familiarity with their aspect, physical and intellectual, and the consequent faculty of reproducing them with approximate fidelity. Contemporary Rev., I. 241.
Exact realism. See Herbartian.

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I have alluded to the absence in Hawthorne of that quality of realism which is now so much in fashion, an absence in regard to which there will of course be more to say; and yet I think I am not fanciful in saying that he testifies to the sentiments of the society in which he flourished almost as pertinently (proportions observed) as Balzac and some of his descendants—MM. — The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hawthorne, by Henry James, Junr.
I'm happy enough with the half-realism, as this is more or less the line I take in the paper. — fragments of consciousness
The result of this realism is an uneasy queasiness that can lead to uncontrollable vomiting. — The Toque
Rejection of hopeless "realism" - that politicians aren't considering our demand for hand counts - is but a part of the overall strategy.
Crabbe replies to critics that if his realism was unpoetical, the criterion suggested would condemn much of Dryden and Pope as equally unpoetical. — English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century

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realism

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