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The article concerns Markus Gabriel's philosophical conception —ontology and main thesesof so-called «neutral realism», while questioning the most significant arguments of the German philosopher and considering a few other positions that it has parallels with. For instance, with Frege's conception of meaning, in which the notion of sense plays an important role, being one of the elements of the so-called «semantic triangle». Or with the notion of sense in post-structuralism, particularly in works by Derrida, who as-sumed sense as the horizon of the world, yet rejected any reality beyond it. Among others, G.Harman's object-oriented philosophy and L.Bryant's flat ontology appear to be to some extent relevant for compar-ing them with «neutral realism»: realism as a crucial point and anti-hierarchy of ontology seem to be a common place for each ofthem; however, the definition of reality and existence in each conception dif-fers essentially. Giving a brief overview of conceptual solutions supposed to label Gabriel's philosophy as «new realism», the paper provides analysis of the notion of the «fieldof sense», as well as several on-tological principles of the aforementioned conception: neutrality, univocality of being, and anti-essentialism. A polemic interest is drawn by the problematic understanding of existence in Gabriel's on-tology. There can alsobe seen a problem with reaching positive results of Gabriel's realistic program, which is eventually supposed to give some sort of knowledge and explanation of what is real. The paper ends with some critical arguments (for instance, concerning an ambiguity of Gabriel's ontology, in which the pluralistic and unifying strategies of defining any beings tend to intertwine with one another), thus calling into question the initial realistic tasks of Gabriel's philosophical project.

The ancient separation of the world into the domains of ideas and things created the ground for questioning about true existence. Thus, reality could be attributed to ideas, or it could be attributed to things. Given the tension between Platonic and Aristotelian ontologies, the problem of the status of general notions was embodied in medieval philosophical discussion, often clothed in theological form. The article reconstructs the controversy around the ontological status of universals within several scholastic doctrines. The essence of this dispute, from a perspective that is of ontological and gnoseological interest, comes down to clarifying the categorical grid, within which it is possible to make statements concerning reality. There are at least three main positions that refl ect the views of scholastic thinkers on the ontological nature of universals: realism, nominalism and conceptualism. The basic difference between them is determined by confl icting opinions regarding the issues of autonomy of the existence of universals, their dependence on the mind and things, and also about their materiality. This study reproduces the crucial moves of the scholastic thought of realists (A. Canterbury), nominalists (W. Occam), conceptualists (P. Abelard) and moderate realists (F. Aquinas), around which the conceptual background of the conversation about reality is formed. At the same time, it became obvious that the concept of realism (which was not yet in the philosophical vocabulary during the period of scholasticism) acquires its features in the intersections and contradictions between positions in the range from strong realism to extreme nominalism. Besides, it has been demonstrated in actual analysis that a set of alternative solutions to the problem of universals was refl ected in the broad philosophical problems of Modern (along the epistemological teachings of rationalism and empiricism) and contemporary thought (in projects of speculative realism, fl at ontologies, as well as in the fi eld of philosophy of mind). At the same time, it must be recognized, as a result, that the later development of the concept of realism and the problems of cognition associated with it had a retrospective impact on the correlation of scholastic positions with each other.