The doctrine according to which a world exists independently of us and that we can know it to some extent as it is in itself.  Absolute realism is the doctrine, holding that the objects of knowledge exist in reality, exactly as they exist in knowledge.  This was the position of Plato and others like him, including modern Ontologists.  Moderate realists hold that human knowledge attains the intelligible forms of things, though such that these forms can be considered either (1) as being individual in things, (2) as universal in the intellect, or (3) absolutely and in isolation, according to their own proper intelligible notes.