William of Ockham

Born: C. 1285, London, England, Died: C. 1347, Munich, Germany

Major Works: The exact chronological order of Ockham's works is not known. His works on logic, physics, and theology written before 1324 are: The Sum of All Logic, Exposition on the Book of Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories, Exposition on the Book of Predicates, Compendium of Logic, Exposition on the Eight Books of the Physics of Aristotle, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (referred to as Ordinatio [Book 1] and Reportatio [Books 2-4], Seven Discussions on Anything and Everything (Quodlibeta), On the Sacrament of the Altar, Predestination, God's Foreknowledge, Future Contingents. Works written after 1324: The Work of Ninety Days, Compendium of Errors of Pope John XXII, Eight Questions Concerning the Power and Dignity of the Pope, Dialogues Between Master and Disciples upon the Power of Emperors and Popes. Major Ideas: Nominalism rejects the view that there are universals (essences) in things; it emphasizes the experienced world of contingent beings. The name used for a thing does not capture the essence of the thing but is simply a conventional sign used to refer to the thing. Logic seeks to organize and clarify human thought. Intuitive cognition is a certain grasp by sense and judgment of any particular being, while abstractive cognition based on intuitive cognition organizes many similar things under universal terms (names). Ockham's razor is the principle of economy in theorizing; it calls for the least number of assumptions in the construction of an explanation. God is known by faith in his revelation, not by reason examining his creation. Creation and salvation are the manifestations of the divine will that call each person to a covenant partnership. The claim of the papacy to be supreme over the secular realm is to be rejected. The gospel law is the law of freedom.

William of Ockham (Occam) as a member of the Franciscan order studied and taught at Oxford from 1309 to 1323. He remained a "beginner" in theology; hence, Ockham is called the "Venerabilis Inceptor." He was prevented from occupying an official chair of theology -1-

probably by the chancellor of the university, who saw dangerous tendencies in Ockham's thought. The chancellor petitioned Pope John XXII (d. 1334) to examine the writings of his Oxford professor and Ockham was summoned to Avignon. There, while waiting three years for a theological commission to examine his Commentary on the Sentences, Ockham found himself embroiled in a controversy with the pope that would affect the remainder of his life. William argued that Jesus and Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) taught by their lives that spiritual perfection could be achieved only by the complete renunciation of all worldly property. This view, taken by the so-called spiritual Franciscans, was condemned by John XXII. Ockham believed that in this condemnation th e pope demonstrated himself to be a heretic. Fleeing certain imprisonment and possible execution, Ockham sought the protection of the German emperor, Louis of Bavaria (d. 1347). Excommunicated, Ockham never left Munich, where he spent the remaining nineteen years of his life. In his lifetime, Ockham, as a philosopher and theologian, was at the center of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. He remains controversial to the present day. He has been accused of bringing down the entire Scholastic synthesis of faith and reason. Some have seen him as the skeptic who denied causality and the. universality of moral norms-in effect, the David Hume of the late Middle Ages. These characterizations are extreme. Blessed with a gift for the observation of facts and the dynamics of logic, Ockham was above all a theologian of the Middle Ages who accepted the basic tenets of the medieval world-view. He lived, however, at a time when the security of that world-view, so well represented by the order and harmony of the Summa theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) and the great Gothic cathedrals, was clearly breaking down. As paradoxical as it seems, it appears correct that the philosophy associated with the Venerabilis Inceptor, nominalism, represented a quest for certainty at a moment in Western history that experienced. widespread anxiety about the essentials. At the same time, his philosophy contributed greatly to that kiss of cosmic security so characteristic of our modern age. Nominalism The Middle Ages inherited from the philosophers of antiquity a theory of knowledge that sought to identify what one knows and how one knows it. This epistemology focused on the universal as it was found in the particular, for example, humanity as it is expressed in the individual human being. To understand nominalism, a brief description of this focus on the universals is necessary, for it is this epistemology against which Ockham's nominalism is reacting. Saint Augustine (d. 430), who sought to integrate Platonic philosophy with the biblical heritage, taught that the Forms are the exemplars of all created things and in the mind of God before they exist in matter. God gave all created things an identity that stems from the universal form contained in the particular; hence all horses share a common characteristic of horseness that distinguishes them from trees, which all share the universal, treeness. To know anything, the human mind needs to grasp the spiritual form in the matter, the universal in the particular, the one in the many. Centuries later, Saint Thomas Aquinas, under the influence of Aristotelian philosophy, would understand the form in a particular thing to be actualizing itself as the created being strives for perfection. Both authors argued

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in different ways that the spiritual mind of human beings struggles to grasp from the limitations of matter the intelligible universal form that explains the core of being. In knowing the universal and by ordering all things in accord with a set of integrated and comprehensive ideas, the person moves from the creation to the creator, from the effect to the cause. Reason, as it strives to reach the essence of things, is in harmony with a faith that accepts the revelation of God, for both the creation and the Bible have the same source. The mind by its ascent from the material to the immaterial achieves a closeness to God, the source of all truth and the end of all human longings. Ideas that offer coherence and intelligibility were thought to be truly in touch with the real common element in all the individuals that form any particular class of being. Hence, this tradition is often referred to as realism. Standing in a tradition that can be traced back to the Stoics and to some early Scholastics, notably Peter Abelard (1079-1142), William of Ockham claimed that universals are simply signs or names the mind employs to organize and represent several objects. Hence the label, nominalism, from the Latin nomen, meaning name. The universals are not in things but in the mind. With this claim Ockham shifted the orientation of the mind from the problem of being to that of language and logic, from the diversity of being to the diversity of terms used to describe being. Universal names (such as humanness, horseness, treeness) are simply devices by which a person organizes beings that are similar, rather than expressions of what is grasped by the knowing mind. Here is the repudiation of the ontological status of the universals. Universals are not expressed by divine intelligence nor do they constitute the formative principle at the core of the creation, Ockham argues. The reason for the similarity of things is not that they all participate in a universal idea but, rather, that each thing is known and created by God as a single reality to be similar to other beings in the same class (as a builder uses the plans of one house to build another similar to it). In this nominalism, we see a shift from the view of the creation as a shadow and reflection of a higher level of being to the full reality of the experienced world of beings. This shift to the world of real beings is basic to Ockham's views on what constitutes knowledge. He claims that our knowledge is grounded in an "intuitive cognition" of a particular aspect of reality. We know through our senses and by making judgments on what is directly experienced in the world or in ourselves. The singular is the immediate object of perception. The mind is in contact with reality and a sign (any name) stands for a real event in the world. The name for a thing represents the thing. When ideas organize many particulars in acts of induction (or as Ockham puts it, "abstractive cognition") they prompt the recognition of similarities among things. Logic is the arrangement of these ideas in order to obtain clarity of thought and an organized body of truths. Ockham's nominalism accepts the classical definition of truth as a correspondence between what one thinks and what is actually the case. The key difference between Ockham and many of his predecessors is that he claimed that what is known is the concrete particular, not the abstracted universal. In this Ockham stands in the tradition of another famous Franciscan, Duns Scotus (d. 1308), in that both sought to repudiate the dangers involved in a false hypostatization of abstraction. Ockham's Razor

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The cutting away of an elaborate hierarchy of ideas and concepts in the attempt to grasp the truth is popularly known as Ockham's razor. Ockham's parsimonious use of explanation stands in the tradition of Saint Francis, who taught his order to avoid "vain curiosity," and for centuries philosophers had tried to use as few principles as possible to explain the essence of reality. However, it was Ockham's nominalism that sought above all to shave away the multiple abstractions that others thought necessary to explain things. Thus we read in his Quodlibeta Septem that "when a proposition comes out true for things, if two things suffice for its truth, it is superfluous to assume a third." This same idea is expressed elsewhere in the Ordinatio in the words "plurality should not be assumed without necessity." God In his thinking about God, Ockham limited reason to what could be directly experienced. Hence, truths about God could not be demonstrated by reason but rather must be held by faith. For Ockham, the universe does not flow out of the eternal structures of God, as various versions of medieval Neoplatonism claim, but rather from divine decree. Since the creation and the creator have no common ontological ground, the doctrine of analogy, which holds that one can see in the creation reflections of the creator, cannot be used as justification for statements about the divine. What is needed to know God is a faith in his words as revealed in the Bible. In this separation of reason from faith, the harmony of faith and reason so dear to Scholastics is rent by an epistemology that sees these as two separate ways of knowing. They form the basis of a twofold truth, one relating to the sacred, the other to the secular. Reason cannot demonstrate the certainty of revelation. It is able only to elucidate the implications, mean ing, and value of revelation. Ockham, along with Scotus, shifted the focus from the Thomistic emphasis on divine intelligibility worked out throughout the creation to the divine will that called humanity to, above all, love God and obey his commandments. Rejecting the God of metaphysics who as the primary cause empowers and acts through a series of secondary causes, Ockham affirmed the God of the covenant who invites humanity to act as a free partner in the building of the creation. Society and Papal Power In the midst of his controversy with Pope John XXII, Ockham wrote in a letter to his Franciscan brothers that against this "pseudo-pope I have set my face like flint." The hostility generated over the question of spiritual poverty and Ockham's own experience or papal power occasioned a series or political writings that sought to define the limit of that power in relationship to the individual and to secular society. a whole. His political views are complex and cannot be reduced to any single principle of: nominalism. While the assumptions of nominalism are present, what emerges in the work of the last third of his life are key ecclesiological themes that would be more fully and systematically developed by later writers. The Inceptor was the first great medieval Christian theologian to engage in a sustained and elaborate intellectual attack upon a reigning pope. In this he would anticipate a long and significant tradition in later Western thought.

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In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII (d. 1303) issued his most famous papal bull Unam Sanctam, in which he argued that the Church has power over the two swords (Luke 22 38) the spiritual and the temporal. Since the eternal is higher than the temporal and the spiritual greater than the material, the pope thus has jurisdiction over all creatures. This claim, the zenith of a long process of medieval papal assertions to primacy over the creation, emerged from the same hierarchical participation view of being that was being directly attacked by nominalism. Ockham, while not rejecting the commission to Peter (Matthew 16 18) and the spiritual authority of the Church, rejects the idea of the subordination of the secular society to the sacred one. Worldly kingdoms exist to aid individuals to achieve the common good and to help sinful humanity through the use of just laws. Empires exist as a direct result of God's will, not through the power invested in God's holy people. Thus Ockham notes that the Bible accepts the existence of Egypt and Babylon, while Jesus and his apostles respected and obeyed the laws of the Roman Empire The command "render to Caesar" (Matthew 22 21) is the obligation to recognize in the very existence of non-Christian societies the will of God All persons, no matter what their creed, are given by God the right to life, health, and dominion over the creation (Genesis 1:28). In this, Ockham affirms the radical contingency of all secular societies directly on the will of God as opposed to the power of the Church. Also, this line of thought articulates his attempt to desecrate secular society and governmental powers while at the same time maintaining their value. In the claims of Boniface and his successors, Ockham saw a contradiction to the witness of Jesus, who came to serve, not to he served (Luke 22:27). This assertion of papal authority over temporal affairs was also, to one who experienced excommunication, the source of oppression. For Ockham, the basic principle set forth in his Dialogus was "Lex Evangelica est lex libertatis." This law of freedom at the core of the gospel means that individuals will find in their faith liberation from ignorance and sin in a partnership with God that alone brings harmony and peace. In the Franciscan ideal, only the knowledge derived from this faith offers to the individual freedom from the oppression of sinful men. Ockham's Influence Some scholars have seen in Ockham all the key themes that would later form the core of the Reformation. While it is well known that through later theologians, such as Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), nominalism would be communicated to the sixteenth century, it would not be correct to identify the principle of "Sola Scriptura" as Ockham's own. Although many passages seem to lead to that principle, comprehensive studies of Ockham's writings have resulted in the conclusion that he was more in line with the "two-source" view of the Council of Trent (1545-63), in which both revelation and tradition serve as avenues of divine truth. Jesus had promised to be with the Church until the end of time (Matthew 28:20) and thus, by rejecting the true faith, John XXII, in Ockham's eyes, became a heretic and so ceased to be the true earthly leader of the Christian community. Nevertheless, parallels with the later reformers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can be noted in the following Ockhamite themes: that the visible struct ures are to be at the service of the spiritual life of faith, that clergy are called to minister not to rule, that secular power has its own independent sphere of influence, that the Christian in the faith that comes from baptism can repudiate a pope who is in heresy, and that no human institution is final or absolute.

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The reformers would stand with Ockham in the repudiation of the God of the metaphysicians in favor of the biblical God of the covenant whose will is expressed in word and deed. Although there are many rationalistic elements in Ockham's writings, later ages would develop his voluntarism. Although there are many arguments for the value of institutions, later ages would champion his focus on the individual just as Ockham embodied the rising individuality of the late Middle Ages. Ockham did not form a school or gather disciples around himself. Nevertheless, the main lines of his nominalism would influence numerous scholars in the intellectual centers of the fourteenth century, notably at the universities at Oxford and Paris. His thought became known as the "modern way" (via moderna) as opposed to the "old way" (via antiqua) of thirteenth-century Scholasticism. This title proved to be prophetic. Later science would find in nominalistic epistemology an empirical and inductive method that grounded verification in the full reality of the experienced world. Nominalism would clearly delineate, and at the same time reduce, the realm of the knowable. In the loss of coherence, purpose, and hierarchical metaphysical order, life and reality seemed much more complex. William of Ockham stands at the beginning of a long modern tradition where the mind in its struggle with the contingent order of being seeks to overcome the gap between itself and reality. Further Reading Adams, Marilyn McCord. William Ockham. 2 vols. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. This is an encyclopedic 1,400-page work in which many of the most important passages from Ockham are identified and clearly translated. This study seeks to situate the Inceptor's thought in the context of the intellectual traditions of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This study will be difficult for beginners but for the more seasoned reader of Ockham, it yields many insights. Boehner, Philotheus. Collected Articles on Ockham. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1958. This is a collection of twenty-four articles on a wide range of topics from text studies to the metaphysics, epistemology, and politics of William. Boehner was one of the most important twentieth-century interpreters of Ockham. His careful work with the primary sources has greatly helped modern scholars appreciate the complexities and nuances in the texts. Carre, Meyrick H. Realists and Nominalists. London: Oxford University Press, 1946. This work is an easy-to-read, straightforward account of the realist-nominalist debate in the Middle Ages through a consideration of the positions of Augustine, Abelard, Aquinas, and Ockham. Leff, Gordon. The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook: An Essay on the Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. A short, sweeping overview of the fourteenth century that offers the reader a general introduction to the problems, the tensions, and the pluralism of the age. Leff, Gordon. William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975. This is Leff's magisterial study of Ockham,

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which attempts to set forth in a comprehensive manner all of William's positions on the most important issues relating to the cognitive, the theological, and the created order. This study is accessible to the novice; however, its sheer volume requires discipline and patience. McGrade, Arthur Steven. The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional Principles. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. This work seeks to situate Ockham within the political institutions of the age; the study identifies the controlling motives in the Inceptor's social philosophy while offering a positive assessment of his efforts at Church reform. Oberman, Heiko Augustinus. The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963. This important study in the history of Christian theology clearly demonstrates the influence of Ockham and the impact of nominalistic ideas as they were transmitted and developed throughout the fifteenth century. Trinkaus, Charles, with Heiko A. Oberman. The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference. Leiden: E. I. Brill, 1974. This is a collection of learned papers addressing a wide range of topics in theology, lay piety, humanism, and the arts. The first five studies, which directly relate to Ockham, are especially valuable for the identification of the key religious implications that emerge from nominalism. _________________ This article is by Lawrence F. Hundersmarck, and is taken from Great Thinkers of the Western World, Annual 1999 p123. COPYRIGHT 1999 HarperCollins Publishers.

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