July 6, 2011 24 Comments It was common in Husserl’s era to
encounter not only the skeptical relativism as espoused by the
empircists, but also their concomitant nominalism. Husserl
viewed nominalism as equally destructive to the project of pure
logic as a foundation of the sciences, as he did the skepticism
he so vehemently railed against. This is due to the fact that in
order for science to operate coherently, it must have a pure, a
priori foundation based upon ideal entities. In other words,
logic itself, as grounding scientific discourse, must be
grounded theoretically in an a prioristic theory of meanings and
universals. The purpose of this paper is to present and defend
Husserl’s arguments for universals and his critique of
nominalism—which appear just as relevant today as did his
critique of skeptical relativism. Nominalism is the theory,
arising in the Late Middle Ages, which opposed the
ancient/traditional view that universals had some kind of “real”
existence (whether mental or ontological). Nominali