Reism, Concretism and Schopenhauer Diagrams

Abstract

Reism or concretism are the labels for a position in ontology and semantics that
is represented by various philosophers. As Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Jan
Woleński have shown, there are two dimensions with which the abstract
expression of reism can be made concrete: The ontological dimension of reism
says that only things exist; the semantic dimension of reism says that all
concepts must be reduced to concrete terms in order to be meaningful. In this
paper we argue for the following two theses: (1) Arthur Schopenhauer has
advocated a reistic philosophy of language which says that all concepts must
ultimately be based on concrete intuition in order to be meaningful. (2) In his
semantics, Schopenhauer developed a theory of logic diagrams that can be
interpreted by modern means in order to concretize the abstract position of
reism. Thus we are not only enhancing Jan Woleński’s list of well-known
reists, but we are also adding a diagrammatic dimension to concretism,
represented by Schopenhauer.