In literary and art critique, realism is a mode of representation that conveys the impressions of a correctly described subject;
In philosophy, on the other hand, the term realism is used to denote several positions.
Unlike nominalism, realism means a doctrine according to which universals are real.
This doctrine is sometimes called scholastic realism because of the controversy over the status of universals, an issue too important to medieval (scholastic) thinkers.
In contrast to an understanding of idealism, realism means the position that the objects of knowledge have a permanent or real existence, separate from our consciousness or knowledge of them.
Finally, unlike antirealism, it refers to a position that argues that it makes sense to ask whether our representations of the world represent objects correctly. There is no point in antirealism, and it is even worse to ask about it.
