William of Occam, was a fourteenth-century English philosopher.
Historically, Ockham has been cast as the outstanding opponent of
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274): Aquinas perfected the great "medieval
synthesis" of faith and reason and was canonized by the Catholic
Church; Ockham destroyed the synthesis and was condemned by the
Catholic Church. Although it is true that Aquinas and Ockham disagreed
on most issues, Aquinas had many other critics, and Ockham did not
criticize Aquinas any more than he did others. It is fair enough,
however, to say that Ockham was a major force of change at the end of
the Middle Ages. He was a courageous man with an uncommonly sharp
mind. His philosophy was radical in his day and continues to provide
insight into current philosophical debates.
The principle of simplicity is the central theme of Ockham's approach,
so much so that this principle has come to be known as "Ockham's
Razor." Ockham uses the razor to eliminate unnecessary hypotheses. In
metaphysics, Ockham champions nominalism, the view that universal
essences, such as humanity or whiteness, are nothing more than
concepts in the mind. He develops an Aristotelian ontology, admitting
only individual substances and qualities. In epistemology, Ockham
defends direct realist empiricism, according to which human beings
perceive objects through "intuitive cognition," without the help of
any innate ideas. These perceptions give rise to all of our abstract
concepts and provide knowledge of the world. In logic, Ockham presents
a version of supposition theory to support his commitment to mental
language. Supposition theory had various purposes in medieval logic,
one of which was to explain how words bear meaning. Theologically,
Ockham is a fideist, maintaining that belief in God is a matter of
faith rather than knowledge. Against the mainstream, he insists that
theology is not a science and rejects all the alleged proofs of the
existence of God. Ockham's ethics is a divine command theory. In the
Euthyphro dialogue, Plato (437-347 B.C.E.) poses the following
question: Is something good because God wills it or does God will
something because it is good? Although most philosophers affirm the
latter, divine command theorists affirm the former. Ockham's divine
command theory can be seen as a consequence of his metaphysical
libertarianism. In political theory, Ockham advances the notion of
rights, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech.
1. Life and Works
Very little biographical information about Ockham survives. There is a
record of his ordination in the year 1306. From this, we infer that he
was born between 1280 and 1285, presumably in the small town of
Ockham, twenty-five miles southwest of London, England. The medieval
church in this town, All Saints, recently installed a stained glass
window of Ockham because it is probably the church in which he grew
up. Nevertheless, we know nothing of Ockham's childhood or family.
Most likely, he spoke Middle English and wrote exclusively in Latin.
Because Ockham joined the Franciscan order (known as the Order of the
Friars Minor or OFM), he would have received his early education at a
Franciscan house. From there, he pursued a degree in theology at
Oxford University. He never completed it, however, because in 1323 he
was summoned to the papal court, which had been moved from Rome to
Avignon, to answer to charges of heresy.
Ockham remained in Avignon under a loose form of house arrest for four
years while the papacy carried out its investigation. Through this
ordeal Ockham became convinced that the papacy was corrupt and finally
decided to flee with some other Franciscans on trial there. On May 26,
1328 they escaped in the night on stolen horses to the court of Louis
of Bavaria, a would-be emperor, who had his own reasons for opposing
the Pope. They were all ex-communicated and hunted down but never
captured.
After a brief and unsuccessful campaign in Italy, Louis and his
entourage settled in Munich. Ockham spent the rest of his days there
as a political activist, writing treatises against the papacy. Ockham
died sometime between 1347 and 1349, unreconciled with the Catholic
Church. Because he never returned to his academic career, Ockham
acquired the nickname "Venerable Inceptor"—an "inceptor" being one who
is on the point of earning a degree. Ockham's other nickname is the
"More than Subtle Doctor" because he was thought to have surpassed the
Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308), who was known
as the Subtle Doctor.
Methodologically, Ockham fits comfortably within the analytic
philosophical tradition. He considers himself a devoted follower of
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), whom he calls "The Philosopher," though
most Aristotle scholars would find many of his interpretations
dubious. Ockham may simply have a unique understanding of Aristotle or
he may be using Aristotle as cover for developing views he knew would
be threatening to the status quo.
Aside from Aristotle, the French Franciscan philosopher Peter John
Olivi (1248 – 1298) was the single most important influence on Ockham.
Olivi is an extremely original thinker, pioneering direct realism,
nominalism, metaphysical libertarianism, and many of the same
political views that Ockham defends later in his career. One notable
difference between the two, however, is that, while Ockham loves
Aristotle, Olivi hates him. Ockham never acknowledges Olivi because
Olivi was condemned as a heretic.
Ockham published several philosophical works before losing official
status as an academic. The first was his Commentary on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard, a standard requirement for medieval theology
students. The philosopher and archbishop Peter Lombard (1100–1160/4)
composed a book of opinions (sententia) for and against various
controversial claims. By commenting on this book, students would learn
the art of argumentation while at the same time developing their own
views. As a student, Ockham also wrote several commentaries on the
works of Aristotle. In addition, he engaged in public debates, the
proceedings of which were published under the titles Disputed
Questions and Quodlibetal Questions—"quodlibet" meaning "whatever you
like." Ockham's opus magnum, however, is his Suma Logicae, in which he
lays out the fundamentals of his logic and its accompanying
metaphysics. We do not know exactly when it was written, but it is the
latest of his academic works. After the Avignon affair, Ockham wrote
and circulated several political treatises unofficially, the most
important of which is his Dialogue on the Power of the Emperor and the
Pope. All of Ockham's works have been edited into modern editions but
not all have been translated.
2. The Razor
Ockham's Razor is the principle of parsimony or simplicity according
to which the simpler theory is more likely to be true. Ockham did not
invent this principle; it is found in Aristotle, Aquinas, and other
philosophers Ockham read. Nor did he call the principle a "razor." In
fact, the first known use of the term "Occam's razor" occurs in 1852
in the work of the British mathematician William Rowan Hamilton.
Although Ockham never even makes an argument for the validity of the
principle, he uses it in many striking ways, and this is how it became
associated with him.
For some, the principle of simplicity implies that the world is
maximally simple. Aquinas, for example, argues that nature does not
employ two instruments where one suffices. This interpretation of the
principle is also suggested by its most popular formulation: "Entities
should not be multiplied beyond necessity." Yet this is a problematic
assertion. We know today that nature is often redundant in both form
and function. Although medieval philosophers were largely ignorant of
evolutionary biology, they did affirm the existence of an omnipotent
God, which is alone enough to render the assumption that the world is
maximally simple suspicious. In any case, Ockham never makes this
assumption and he does not use the popular formulation of the
principle.
For Ockham, the principle of simplicity limits the multiplication of
hypotheses not necessarily entities. Favoring the formulation "It is
useless to do with more what can be done with less," Ockham implies
that theories are meant to do things, namely, explain and predict, and
these things can be accomplished more effectively with fewer
assumptions.
At one level, this is just common sense. Suppose your car suddenly
stops running and your fuel gauge indicates an empty gas tank. It
would be silly to hypothesize both that you are out of gas and that
you are out of oil. You need only one hypothesis to explain what has
happened.
Some would object that the principle of simplicity cannot guarantee
truth. The gas gauge on your car may be broken or the empty gas tank
may be just one of several things wrong with the car. In response to
this objection, one might point out that the principle of simplicity
does not tell us which theory is true but only which theory is more
likely to be true. Moreover, if there is some other sign of damage,
such as a blinking oil gage, then there is a further fact to explain,
warranting an additional hypothesis.
Although the razor seems like common sense in everyday situations,
when used in science, it can have surprising and powerful effects. For
example, in his classic exposition of theoretical physics, A Brief
History of Time, Stephen Hawking attributes the discovery of quantum
mechanics to Ockham's Razor.
Nevertheless, not everyone approves of the razor. Ockham's
contemporary and fellow Franciscan Walter Chatton proposed an
"anti-razor" in opposition to Ockham. He declares that if three things
are not enough to verify an affirmative proposition about things, a
fourth must be added, and so on. Others call Ockham's razor a
"principle of stinginess," accusing it of quashing creativity and
imagination. Still others complain that there is no objective way to
determine which of two theories is simpler. Often a theory that is
simpler in one way is more complicated in another way. All of these
concerns and others make Ockham's razor controversial.
At bottom, Ockham advocates simplicity in order to reduce the risk of
error. Every hypothesis carries the possibility that it may be wrong.
The more hypotheses you accept, the more you increase your risk.
Ockham strove to avoid error at all times, even if it meant abandoning
well-loved, traditional beliefs. This approach helped to earn him his
reputation as destroyer of the medieval synthesis of faith and reason.
3. Metaphysics: Nominalism
One of the most basic challenges in metaphysics is to explain how it
is that things are the same despite differences. The Greek philosopher
Heraclitus (540 – 480 B.C.E.) points out that you can never step into
the same river twice, referring not just to rivers, but to places,
people, and life itself. Every day everything changes a little bit and
everywhere you go you find new things. Heraclitus concludes from such
observations that nothing ever remains the same. All reality is in
flux.
The problem with seeing the world this way is that it leads to radical
skepticism: if nothing stays the same from moment to moment and from
place to place, then we can never really be certain about anything. We
can't know our friends, we can't know the world we live in, we can't
even know ourselves! Moreover, if Heraclitus is right, it seems
science is impossible. We could learn the properties of a chemical
here today and still have no basis for knowing its properties
someplace else tomorrow.
Needless to say, most people would prefer to avoid skepticism. It's
hard to carry on in a state of complete ignorance. Besides, it seems
obvious that science is not impossible. Studying the world really does
enable us to know how things are over time and across distances. The
fact that things change through time and vary from place to place does
not seem to prevent us from having knowledge. From this, some
philosophers, such as Plato and Augustine (354-430), draw the
conclusion that Heraclitus was wrong to suppose that everything is in
flux. Something stays the same, something that lays underneath the
changing and varying surfaces we perceive, namely, the universal
essence of things.
For example, although individual human beings change from day to day
and vary from place to place, they all share the universal essence of
humanity, which is eternally the same. Likewise for dogs, trees,
rocks, and even qualities—there must be a universal essence of
blueness, heat, love, and anything else one can think of. Universal
essences are not physical realities; if you dissect a human being, you
will not find humanity inside like a kidney or a lung! Nevertheless,
universal essences are metaphysical realities: they provide the
invisible structure of things.
Belief in universal essences is called "metaphysical realism," because
it asserts that universal essences are real even though we cannot
physically see them. Although there are various different versions of
metaphysical realism, they are all designed to secure a foundation for
knowledge. It seems you have a choice: either you accept metaphysical
realism or you are stuck with skepticism.
Ockham, however, argues that this is a false dilemma. He rejects
metaphysical realism and skepticism in favor of nominalism: the view
that universal essences are concepts in the mind. The word
"nominalism" comes from the Latin word nomina, meaning name. Earlier
nominalists such as the French philosopher Roscelin (1050-1125), had
advanced the more radical view that universal essences are just names
that have no basis in reality. Ockham developed a more sophisticated
version of nominalism often called "conceptualism" because it holds
that universal essences are concepts caused in our minds when we
perceive real similarities among things in the world.
For example, when a child comes in contact with different human beings
over time, he begins to form the concept of humanity. The realist
would say that he has detected the invisible common structure of these
individuals. Ockham, in contrast, insists that the child has merely
perceived similarities that fit naturally under one concept.
It is tempting to assume that Ockham rejects metaphysical realism
because of the principle of simplicity. After all, realism requires
believing in invisible entities that might not actually exist. As a
matter of fact, however, Ockham never uses the razor to attack
realism. And on closer examination, this makes sense: the realist
position is that the existence of universal essences is a hypothesis
necessary to explain how science is possible. Since Ockham was just as
concerned as everyone else to avoid skepticism, he might have been
persuaded by such an argument.
Ockham has a much deeper worry about realism: he is convinced it is
incoherent. Incoherence is the most serious charge a philosopher can
level against a theory because it means that the theory contains a
contradiction—and contradictions cannot be true. Ockham asserts that
metaphysical realism cannot be true because it holds that a universal
essence is one thing and many things at the same time. The form of
humanity is one thing, because it is what all humans have in common,
but it is also many things because it provides an invisible structure
of each individual one of us. This is to say that it is both one thing
and not one thing at the same time, which is a contradiction.
Realists claim that this apparent contradiction can be explained in
various ways. Ockham insists, however, that no matter how you explain
it, there is no way to avoid the fact that the notion of a universal
essence is an impossible hypothesis. He writes,
There is no universal outside the mind really existing in individual
substances or in the essences of things…. The reason is that
everything that is not many things is necessarily one thing in number
and consequently a singular thing. [Opera Philosophica II, pp. 11-12]
Ockham presents a thought experiment to prove universal essences do
not exist. He writes that, according to realism,
…it would follow that God would not be able to annihilate one
individual substance without destroying the other individuals of the
same kind. For, if he were to annihilate one individual, he would
destroy the whole that is essentially that individual and,
consequently, he would destroy the universal that is in it and in
others of the same essence. Other things of the same essence would not
remain, for they could not continue to exist without the universal
that constitutes a part of them. [Opera Philosophica I, p. 51]
Since God is omnipotent, he should be able to annihilate a human
being. But the universal form of humanity lies within that human
being. So, by destroying the individual, he will destroy the
universal. And if he destroys the universal, which is humanity, then
he destroys all the other humans as well.
The realist may wish to reply that destroying an individual human
destroys only part of the universal humanity. But this contradicts the
original assertion that the universal humanity is a single shared
essence that is eternally the same for everyone! For Ockham, this
problem decisively defeats realism and leaves us with the nominalist
alternative that universals are concepts caused in our minds when we
perceive similar individuals. To support this alternative, Ockham
develops an empiricist epistemology.
4. Epistemology
a. Direct Realist Empiricism
Epistemology is the study of knowledge: what is it, and how do we come
to have it? There are two basic approaches to epistemology:
rationalists claim that knowledge consists of innate certainties that
we discover through reason; empiricists claim that knowledge consists
in accurate perceptions that we accumulate through experience.
Although early medieval philosophers such as Augustine and Anselm
(1033-1109) were innatists, empiricism came to dominate during the
high Middle Ages. This is mostly because Aristotle was an empiricist
and the texts in which he promotes empiricism were rediscovered and
translated for the first time into Latin during the thirteenth
century.
Following Aristotle, Ockham asserts that human beings are born blank
states: there are no innate certainties to be discovered in our minds.
We learn by observing qualities in objects. Ockham's version of
empiricism is called "direct realism" because he denies that there is
any intermediary between the perceiver and the world. (Note that
direct realism should not be confused with metaphysical realism, which
Ockham rejects, as discussed above.) Direct realism states that if you
see an apple, its redness causes you to know that it is red. This may
seem obvious, but it actually raises a problem that has led many
empiricists, both in Ockham's day and today, to reject direct realism.
As the French philosopher Peter Aureol (1275-1333) points out, the
problem is that there are cases where we perceive something that is
not really there. In optical illusions, hallucinations, and dreams,
our perceptions are completely disconnected with the external world.
Representationalism is the version of empiricism designed to solve
this problem. According to representationalists, human beings perceive
the world through a mental mediary, or representation, known in the
Middle Ages as the "intelligible species." Normally, an apple causes
an intelligible species of itself for us to perceive it through. In
cases of optical illusions, hallucinations, and dreams, something else
causes the intelligible species. The perception seems veridical to us
because there is no difference in the intelligible species. Even
before Peter Aureol, Thomas Aquinas advocated representationalism, and
it soon became the dominant view.
The difficulty with representationalism, as the Irish philosopher
George Berkeley (1685-1754) amply demonstrates, is that once you
introduce an intermediary between the perceiver and the external
world, you lose your justification for belief in the external world.
If all of our ideas come through representations, how do we know what,
if anything, is behind these representations? Something other than
physical objects could be causing them. For example, God could be
transmitting representations of physical objects to our minds without
ever creating any physical objects at all—which is in fact what
Berkeley came to believe. This view, known as idealism, is radically
skeptical, and most philosophers prefer to avoid it.
b. Intuitive Cognition
Ockham preempts idealism through the notion of intuitive cognition,
which plays a crucial role in his four-step account of knowledge
acquisition. It can be summarized as follows. The first step is
sensory cognition: receiving data through the five senses. This is an
ability human beings share with animals. The second step, intuitive
cognition, is uniquely human. Intuitive cognition is an awareness that
the particular individual perceived exists and has the qualities it
has. The third step is recordative cognition, by which we remember
past perceptions. The fourth step is abstractive cognition, by which
we place individuals in groups of similar individuals.
Notice that, if an apple is set in front of a horse, the horse will
receive data about the apple—the color, the smell, etc.—and react
appropriately. The horse will not, however, register the reality of
the object. Suppose you project a realistic, laser image of an apple
in front of the horse and he tries to take a bite. He will become
frustrated, and eventually give up, but he will never really "get it."
Human beings, in contrast, have reality-sensitive minds. It's not a
matter of thinking "This is real" every time we see something. On the
contrary, Ockham asserts that intuitive cognition is
non-propositional. Rather, it is a matter of registering that the
apple really has the qualities we perceive. Ockham writes:
Intuitive cognition is such that when some things are cognized, of
which one inheres in the other, or one is spatially distant from the
other, or exists in some relation to the other, immediately in virtue
of that non-propositional cognition of those things, it is known if
the thing inheres or does not inhere, if it is spatially distant or
not, and the same for other true contingent propositions, unless that
cognition is flawed or there is some impediment. [Opera Theologica I,
p. 31]
While intuitive cognition is itself non-propositional, it provides the
basis for formulating true propositions. A horse cannot say "This
apple is red" because its mind is not complex enough to register the
reality of what it perceives. The human mind, registering the
existence of things—both that they are and how they are—can therefore
formulate assertions about them.
Strictly speaking, when one has an intuitive cognition of an apple,
one is not yet thinking of it as an apple, because this requires
placing it in a group. In normal adult human perception, all four of
the above steps happen together so quickly that it is hard to separate
them. But try to imagine what perception is like for a toddler: she
sees the round, red object and points to it saying "That!" This is an
expression of intuitive cognition.
Intuitive cognition secures a causal link between the external world
and the human mind. The human mind is entirely passive, according to
Ockham, during intuitive cognition. Objects in the world cause us to
be aware of their existence, and this explains and justifies our
belief in them.
Despite his insistence on the causal link between the world and our
minds, Ockham clearly recognizes cases in which intuitive cognition
causes false judgment. (See the last line of the above quotation:
"…unless that cognition is flawed or there is some impediment.") For
example, when you see a stick half-emerged in water, it looks bent.
This is because your intuitive cognition of the stick is being
affected by your simultaneous intuitive cognition of the water, and
this causes a skewed perception. In addition to leaving room for error
on his account, Ockham also leaves room for skepticism: God can
transmit representations to human beings that seem exactly like
intuitive cognitions.
Given that direct realism cannot rule out skepticism any more than
representationalism can, one might wonder why Ockham prefers it. In
the end, it is a question of simplicity. Whereas Ockham never uses his
razor against metaphysical realism, he does use it against
representationalism. Intuitive cognition is necessary to secure a
causal link between the world and the mind, and, once it is in place,
there is no need for a middle man. The intelligible species is an
unnecessary hypothesis.
It is worth noting that intuitive cognition also provides
epistemological support for Ockham's nominalist metaphysics.
Representationalists typically hold that the intelligible species
emanates from the universal essence of the thing. In their view, you
perceive an apple as an apple because the apple's universal essence of
appleness is conveyed to you through its intelligible species. In
fact, many metaphysical realists would argue for the superiority of
their view precisely on the grounds that universal essences provide a
basis for intelligible species, and intelligible species are necessary
for us to know what we are perceiving. They would ask: how else do we
ever identify apples as apples instead of just so many distinct
individuals?
As we have seen, Ockham argues that there is no universal essence.
There is therefore no basis for an intelligible species. Each object
in the world is an absolute individual and that is how we perceive it
at first. Just like toddlers, we are bombarded with a buzzing, booming
confusion of colors and sounds. But our minds are powerful sorting
machines. We remember perceptions over time (recordative cognition)
and organize them into groups (abstractive cognition). This
organizational process gives us a coherent understanding of the world
and is what Ockham aims to explain in his account of logic.
5. Logic
a. Mentalese
Although the human mind is born without any knowledge, according to
Ockham, it does come fully equip with a system for processing
perceptions as they are acquired. This system is thought, which Ockham
understands in terms of an unspoken, mental language. He is therefore
considered an advocate of "mentalese," like the American philosopher
Noam Chomsky.
Ockham might compare thought to a machine ready to manipulate a vast
quantity of empty boxes. As we observe the world, perceptions are
placed in the empty boxes. Then the machine sorts and organizes the
boxes according to content. Two small boxes with similar contents
might be placed together in a big box, and then the big box might be
conjoined to another big box. For example, as perceptions of Rover and
Fido accumulate, they become the concept dog, and then the concept dog
is associated with the concept fleas. This conceptual apparatus
enables us to construct meaningful sentences, such as "All dogs have
fleas."
The intuitive cognition in Ockham's epistemology provides a basis for
what is today called a "causal theory of reference" in philosophy of
language. The word "dog" means dog because the concept you think of
when you write it or say it was caused by the dogs you have perceived.
Dogs cause the same kinds of concepts in all human beings. Thus,
mentalese is universal among us, even though there are different ways
to speak and write words in different countries around the world.
While written and spoken language is conventional, signification
itself is natural.
Early in his career, Ockham entertained the notion that concepts are
mental objects or "ficta" which resemble objects in the world like
pictures. He abandoned ficta theory, however, because it presupposes a
representationalist epistemology, which in turn presupposes
metaphysical realism. Arguing instead for "intellectum theory,"
according to which objects can have causal impact on the mind without
creating mental pictures of themselves; he offers the following
analogy. Medieval pubs received wine in shipments of wooden barrels
sealed with hoops. When the shipment arrived, the pub owner would hang
a barrel hoop outside the front door to communicate to the townspeople
that wine was available. Although the hoop did not resemble wine in
any way, it was significant to the townspeople. This is because the
presence of the hoop was caused by the arrival of the wine. Likewise,
dogs in the world cause concepts in our minds that are significant
even though they do not resemble dogs.
It must be noted that there is a drawback to both the barrel hoop
analogy and the box illustration: they portray concepts as things. For
convenience, Ockham often speaks of concepts loosely as though they
were things. However, according to intellectum theory, concepts are
not really things at all but rather actions. Perceiving a dog does not
cause an entity to exist in your mind; rather, it causes a mental act.
Today we would say that it causes a neuron to fire. Repeated acts
cause a habit: the disposition to perform the act at will. So,
repeated perceptions of dogs cause repeated acts of dog-conceiving and
those repeated acts cause a dog-conceiving habit, meaning that you can
engage in dog-conceiving actions whenever you want, even when there
are no dogs around to perceive.
b. Supposition Theory
In Ockham's view, any coherent thought we have requires connecting or
disconnecting concepts by means of linguistic operators. Ockham has a
lot of ideas about how the linguistic operators work, which he
develops in his version of supposition theory. Although supposition
theory was a major preoccupation of late medieval logicians, scholars
are still divided over its purpose. Some think it was an effort to
build a system of formal logic that ultimately failed. Others think it
was more akin to a modern theory of logical form.
Ockham's interest in supposition theory seems motivated by his concern
to clarify conceptual confusion. Much like Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951), Ockham asserts that many philosophical errors arise due
to the misunderstanding of language. He took metaphysical realism to
be a prime example. Conceiving of human beings in general leads us to
use the word "humanity." Metaphysical realists conclude that this word
must refer to a universal essence within all human beings. For Ockham,
however, the word "humanity" stands for a habit that enables us to
conceive of all the human beings we have perceived to date in a very
efficient manner: stripped of all of their individual details. In this
way, Ockham's supposition theory is designed to support his nominalist
metaphysics while elucidating the rules of thought.
The word "supposition" comes from the Latin word "stand for" but it
closely approximates the technical notion known as "reference" in
English. At its most basic level, supposition theory tells us how
words used in sentences, which Ockham calls "terms," refer to things.
Medieval logicians recognize three types of supposition—material,
personal and simple—but their metaphysical commitments affect their
analyses. Most everyone agrees about material supposition. It occurs
when a term is mentioned rather than used, as is the term "stop" in
the sentence, "The sign says 'stop.'" But they disagree over personal
and simple supposition. For Ockham, personal supposition occurs when a
term stands for an object in the world, as does the term "cat" in the
sentence, "The cat is on the mat" and simple supposition occurs when a
term stands for a concept in the mind, as does "horse" in the
sentence, "Horse is a species." For Ockham's realist opponents, in
contrast, the term "species" stands for a universal essence, which is
an object in the world. They therefore have a different account of
personal and simple supposition.
In addition to three types of supposition, medieval logicians
recognize two types of terms: categorematic and syncategorematic.
Categorematic terms refer to existing things and are called
"categorematic" because, in his Organon, Aristotle asserts that there
are ten categories of existing things. Syncategorematic terms do not
refer to anything at all. They are logical operators, such as "all,"
"not," "if," and "only," which tell how to associate or disassociate
the categorematic terms in a sentence.
Among categorematic terms, some are absolute names while others are
connotative names. Ockham describes the difference as follows:
Properly speaking, only absolute names, that is, concepts signifying
things composed of matter and form, have definitions expressing real
essence. Some examples of this sort of name are "human being," "lion,"
and "goat." Connotative and relative names, on the other hand, which
signify one thing directly and another thing indirectly, have
definitions expressing nominal essence. Some examples of this sort of
name are "white," "hot," "parent," and "child." [Opera Philosophica
IX, p. 554]
The terms "human being" and "parent" are both names for Betty. The
term "human being" signifies Betty in an absolute way because it
refers to her alone as an independently existing object. The term
"parent" signifies Betty in a connotative way because it signifies her
while at the same time signifying her children.
c. The Categories
Although the distinction between absolute and connotative terms seems
minor, Ockham uses it for radical purposes. According to the standard
reading of the Organon, Aristotle holds that there are ten categories
of existing things as follows: substance, quality, quantity, relation,
place, time, position, state, action, and passion. According to
Ockham's reading, however, Aristotle holds that there are only two
categories of existing things: substance and quality. Ockham bases his
interpretation on the thesis that only substances and qualities have
real essence definitions signifying things composed of matter and
form. The other eight categories signify a substance or a quality
while connoting something else. They therefore have nominal essence
definitions, meaning that they are not existing things.
Consider quantity. Suppose you have one orange. It is a substance with
a real essence of citrus fruit. Furthermore, it possesses several
qualities, such as its color, its flavor, and its smell. The orange
and its qualities are existing things according to Ockham. But the
orange is also singular. Is its singularity an existing thing? For
mathematical Platonists, the answer is yes: the number one exists as a
universal essence and inheres in the orange. Ockham, in contrast,
asserts that the singularity of the orange is just a short hand way of
saying that there are no other oranges nearby. So, in the sentence
"Here is one orange" the term "one" is connotative: it directly
signifies the orange itself while indirectly signifying all the other
oranges that are not here. Ockham eliminates the rest of the
categories along the same lines.
Interestingly, Ockham's elimination of quantity precipitated his
summons to Avignon because it pushed him to a new account of the
sacrament of the altar. The sacrament of the altar is the miracle that
is supposed to occur when bread and wine are transformed into the body
and blood of Jesus Christ. This process is known in theology as
"transubstantiation" because one substance changes into another
substance. The problem is to explain why the bread and wine continue
to look, smell, and taste exactly the same despite the underlying
change. According to the standard account, the qualities of the bread
and wine continue to inhere in their quantity, which remains the same
while substances are exchanged. According to Ockham, however, quantity
is nothing other than the substance itself; if the substance changes
then the quantity changes. So, the qualities cannot continue to inhere
in the same quantity. Nor can they transfer from the substance of the
bread and wine into the substance of Jesus because it would be
blasphemous to say that Jesus was crunchy or wet! Ockham's solution is
to claim that the qualities of the bread and wine continue to exist
all by themselves, accompanying the invisible substance of Jesus down
the gullet. Needless to say, this solution was a bit too clever.
One question scholars continue to ask is why Ockham allows for two of
the ten categories to remain instead of just one, namely, substance.
It seems that qualities, such as whiteness, crunchiness, sweetness,
etc, can just as easily be reduced to nominal essences: they signify
the substance itself while connoting the tongue or nose or eye that
perceives it. Of course, if Ockham had eliminated quality, he really
would have had no basis left for saving the miracle of
transubstantiation. Perhaps that was reason enough to stay his razor.
6. Theology
a. Fideism
Despite his departures from orthodoxy and his conflict with the
papacy, Ockham never renounced Catholicism. He steadfastly embraced
fideism, the view that belief in God is a matter of faith alone.
Although fideism was soon to become common among Protestant thinkers,
it was not so common among medieval Catholics. At the beginning of the
Middle Ages, Augustine proposed a proof of the existence of God and
promoted the view that reason is faith seeking understanding. While
the standard approach for any medieval philosopher would be to
recognize a role for both faith and reason in religion, Ockham makes
an uncompromising case for faith alone.
Three assertions reveal Ockham to be a fideist.
i. Theology is Not a Science
The word "science" comes from the Latin word "scientia," meaning
knowledge. In the first book of his Sentences, Peter Lombard raises
the issue of whether and in what sense theology is a science. Most
philosophers commenting on the Sentences found a way to cast faith as
a way of knowing. Ockham, however, makes no such effort. As a staunch
empiricist, Ockham is committed to the thesis that all knowledge comes
from experience. Yet we have no experience of God. It follows
inescapably that we have no knowledge of God, as Ockham affirms in the
following passage:
In order to demonstrate the statement of faith that we formulate about
God, what we would need for the central concept is a simple cognition
of the divine nature in itself—what someone who sees God has.
Nevertheless, we cannot have this kind of cognition in our present
state. [Quodlibetal Questions, pp. 103-4]
By "present state" Ockham is referring to life on earth as a human
being. Just as we now have knowledge of others through intuitive
cognitions of their individual essences, those who go to heaven (if
there ever are any such) will have knowledge of God through intuitive
cognitions of his essence. Until then we can only hope.
ii. The Trinity is a Logical Contradiction
The Trinity is the core Christian doctrine according to which God is
three persons in one. Christians traditionally consider the Trinity a
mystery, meaning that it is beyond the comprehension of the human
mind. Ockham goes so far as to admit that it is a blatant
contradiction. He displays the problem through the following
syllogism:
According to the doctrine of the Trinity:
(1) God is the Father,
and,
(2) Jesus is God.
Therefore, by transitivity, according to the doctrine of the Trinity:
(3) Jesus is the Father.
Yet, according to the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus is not the Father.
So, according to the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus both is and is not
the Father.
Providing precedent for a recent presidential defense, many medieval
philosophers suggested that the transitive inference to the conclusion
is broken by different senses of the word "is." Scotus creatively
argues that the logic of the Trinity is an opaque context that does
not obey the usual rules. For Ockham, however, this syllogism
establishes that theology is not logical and must never be mixed with
philosophy.
iii. There Is No Evidence of Purpose in the Natural World
Living prior to the advent of Christianity, Aristotle never believed
in the Trinity. He does, however, seem to believe in a supernatural
force that lends purpose to all of nature. This is evident in his
doctrine of the Four Causes, according to which every existing thing
requires a fourfold explanation. Ockham would cast these four causes
in terms of the following four questions:
First Cause: What is it made of?
Second Cause: What does it do?
Third Cause: What brought it about?
Fourth Cause: Why does it do what it does?
Most medieval philosophers found Aristotle's four causes conducive to
the Christian worldview, assimilating the fourth cause to the doctrine
of divine providence, according to which everything that happens is
ultimately part of God's plan.
Though Ockham was reluctant to disagree with Aristotle, he was so
determined to keep theology separate from science and philosophy, that
he felt compelled to criticize the fourth (which he calls "final")
cause. Ockham writes,
If I accepted no authority, I would claim that it cannot be proved
either from statements known in themselves or from experience that
every effect has a final cause…. Someone who is just following natural
reason would claim that the question "why?" is inappropriate in the
case of natural actions. For he would maintain that it is no real
question to ask something like, "For what reason is fire generated?"
[Quodlibetal Questions, pp. 246-9]
No doubt Ockham put his criticism in hypothetical, third-person terms
because he knew that openly asserting that the universe itself may be
entirely purposeless would never pass muster with the powers that be.
b. Against the Proofs of God's Existence
Needless to say, Ockham rejects all of the alleged proofs of the
existence of God. Two of the most important proofs then, as now, were
Anselm's ontological proof and Thomas Aquinas's cosmological proof.
Although the former is based on rationalist thinking and the latter is
based on empiricist thinking, they boil down to very similar
strategies, in Ockham's view. There were, of course, many different
versions of each of these proofs circulating in Ockham's day just as
there are today. Ockham thinks that the most plausible version of each
boils down to an infinite regress argument of the following form:
If God does not exist, then there is an infinite regress.
But infinite regresses are impossible.
Therefore, God must exist.
The reason Ockham finds this argument form to be the most plausible is
that he fully agrees with the second premise, that infinite regresses
are impossible. If it were possible to show that God's non-existence
implied an infinite regress, then Ockham would accept the inference to
his existence. Ockham denies, however, that God's non-existence
implies any such thing.
In order to understand Ockham's aversion to infinite regress, it is
necessary to understand Aristotle's distinction between extensive and
intensive infinity. An extensive infinity is an uncountable quantity
of actually existing things. Mathematical Platonists conceive of the
set of whole numbers as an extensive infinity. Ockham, however, deems
the idea of an uncountable quantity contradictory: if the objects
exist, then God can count them, and if God can count them, then they
are not uncountable. An intensive infinity, on the other hand, is just
a lack of limitation. As a nominalist, Ockham understands the set of
whole numbers to be an intensive infinity in the sense that there is
no upward limit on how far someone can count. This does not mean that
the set of whole numbers are an uncountable quantity of actually
existing things. Ockham thinks that infinite regresses are impossible
only in so far as they imply extensive infinity.
i. The Ontological Proof
According to Ockham, advocates of the ontological proof reason as
follows: There would be an infinite regress among entities if there
were not one greatest entity. Therefore, there must be one greatest
entity, namely God.
One way to counter this reasoning would be to deny that greatness is
an objectively existing quality. Ockham does not, however, take this
approach. On the contrary, he seems to take the Great Chain of Being
for granted. The Great Chain of Being is a doctrine prevalent
throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. According to it, all of nature
can be ranked on a hierarchy of value from top to bottom, roughly as
follows: God, angels, humans, animals, plants, rocks. The Great Chain
of Being implies that greatness is an objectively existing quality.
Ockham's curt response to the ontological argument is that it does not
prove that there is just one greatest entity. Bearing the Great Chain
of Being in mind, it is evident what he means to say. If God and the
angels do not exist, then human beings are the greatest entities, and
there is no single best among us. Notice that, even if there were a
single best among humans, he or she would be a "god" in a very
different sense than is required by Catholic orthodoxy.
Some scholars have interpreted Ockham to mean that the ontological
argument succeeds in proving that the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost exist, but not that they are one. It is not clear, however, how
Ockham's empiricism could permit such a conclusion.
ii. The Cosmological Proof
According to Ockham, advocates of the cosmological argument reason as
follows: There would be an infinite regress among causes if there were
not a first cause; therefore, there must be a first cause, namely,
God.
There are two different ways to understand "cause" in this argument:
efficient cause and conserving cause. An efficient cause brings about
an effect successively over time. For example, your grandparents were
the efficient cause of your parents who were the efficient cause of
you. A conserving cause, in contrast, is a simultaneous support for an
effect. For example, the oxygen in the room is a conserving cause of
the burning flame on the candle.
In Ockham's view, the cosmological argument fails using either type of
causality. Consider efficient causality first. If the chain of
efficient causes that have produced the world as we know it today had
no beginning, then it would form, not an extensive infinity, but an
intensive infinity, which is harmless. Since the links in the chain
would not all exist at the same time, they would not constitute an
uncountable quantity of actually existing things. Rather, they would
simply imply that the universe is an eternal cycle of unlimited or
perpetual motion. Ockham explicitly affirms that it is possible that
the world had no beginning, as Aristotle maintained.
Next, consider conserving causality. Conceiving of the world as a
product of simultaneous conserving causes is difficult. The idea is
perhaps best expressed in a story reported by Stephen Hawking.
According to the story, a scientist was giving a lecture on astronomy.
After the lecture, an elderly lady came up and told the scientist that
he had it all wrong. "The world is really a flat plate supported on
the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist asked "And what is the
turtle standing on?" To which the lady triumphantly replied: "You're
very clever, young man, but it's no use – it's turtles all the way
down."
Ockham readily grants that if the world has to be "held up" by
conserving causes, then there must be a first among them because
otherwise the set of conserving causes would constitute an uncountable
quantity of actually existing things. It is in fact a tenet of belief
that God is both an efficient and conserving cause of the cosmos, and
Ockham accepts this tenet on faith. He handily points out, however,
that, just as the cosmos need not have a beginning; it need not be
"held up" in this way at all. Each existing thing may be its own
conserving cause. Hence the cosmological argument is entirely
inconclusive.
Ockham's fideism amounts to a refusal to rely on the God hypothesis
for theory building. It is worth bearing in mind that there were no
philosophy departments or philosophy degrees in the Middle Ages. A
student's only choices for graduate school were law, medicine, or
theology. Wanting to be a philosopher, Ockham studied theology and ran
through his theological exercises, all the while trying to carve out a
separate space for philosophy. The one area where the two worlds
collide inextricably for him is in ethics.
7. Ethics
a. Divine Command Theory
Many people think God commands human beings to be kind because
kindness is good and that God himself is always kind because his
actions are always in conformity with goodness.
Although this was and still is the most common way of conceiving of
the relationship between God and morality, Ockham disagrees. In his
view, God does not conform to an independently existing standard of
goodness; rather, God himself is the standard of goodness. This means
it is not the case that God commands us to be kind because kindness is
good. Rather, kindness is good because God commands it. Ockham was a
divine command theorist: God's will establishes right and wrong.
Divine command theory has always been unpopular because it carries one
very unintuitive implication: if whatever God commands becomes right,
and God can command whatever he wants, then God could command us
always to be unkind and never to be kind, and then it would be right
for us to be unkind and wrong for us to be kind. Kindness would be bad
and unkindness would be good! How could this be?
In Ockham's view, God always has commanded and always will command
kindness. Nevertheless, it is possible for him to command otherwise.
This possibility is a straightforward requirement of divine
omnipotence: God can do anything that does not involve a
contradiction. Of course, plenty of philosophers, such as Thomas
Aquinas, insist that it is impossible for God to command us to be
unkind simply because then God's will would contradict his nature. For
Ockham, however, this is the wrong way to conceive of God's nature.
The most important thing to understand about God's nature, in Ockham's
view, is that it is maximally free. There are no constraints, external
or internal, to what God can will. All of theology stands or falls
with this thesis in Ockham's view.
Ockham grants that it is hard to imagine a world in which God reverses
his commands. Yet this is the price of preserving divine freedom. He
writes,
I reply that hatred, theft, adultery, and the like may involve evil
according to the common law, in so far as they are done by someone who
is obligated by a divine command to perform the opposite act. As far
as everything absolute in these actions is concerned, however, God can
perform them without involving any evil. And they can even be
performed meritoriously by someone on earth if they should fall under
a divine command, just as now the opposite of these, in fact, fall
under a divine command. [Opera Theologica V, p. 352]
One advantage of this approach is that it enables Ockham to make sense
of some instances in the Old Testament where it looks as though God is
commanding such things as murder (as in the case of Abraham
sacrificing Isaac) and deception (as in the case of the Israelites
despoiling the Egyptians). But biblical exegesis is not Ockham's
motive. His motive is to cast God as a paradigm of metaphysical
freedom, so that he can make sense of human nature as made in his
image.
b. Metaphysical Libertarianism
Metaphysical libertarianism is the view that human beings are
responsible for their actions as individuals because they have free
will, defined as the ability to do other than they do. Metaphysical
libertarianism is opposed to determinism, according to which human
beings do not have free will but rather are determined by antecedent
conditions (such as God or nature or environmental factors) to do
exactly what they do.
Suppose Jake eats a cupcake. According to the determinist, antecedent
conditions caused him to do this. Hence, he could not have done
otherwise unless those antecedent conditions had been different. Given
the same conditions, Jake cannot refrain from eating the cupcake.
Determinists are content to conclude that freedom is an illusion.
Compatibilism is a version of determinism according to which being
determined to do exactly what we do is compatible with freedom as long
as the antecedent conditions that determine what we do include our own
choices. Compatibilists claim that the choices we make are free even
though we could not do otherwise given the same antecedent conditions.
On this view, Jake chose to eat the cupcake because his desire for it
outweighed all other considerations at that moment. Our choices are
always determined by our strongest desires according to
compatibilists.
Metaphysical libertarians reject determinism and compatibilism,
insisting that free will includes the ability to act against our
strongest desires. On this view, Jake could have refrained from eating
the cupcake even given the exact same antecedent conditions. While
desires influence our choices they do not cause our choices according
to metaphysical libertarianism; rather, our choices are caused by our
will which is itself an uncaused cause, meaning that it is an
independent power, stronger than any antecedent condition. This notion
of free will enables the metaphysical libertarian to assign a very
strong conception of individual responsibility to human beings: what
we do is not attributable to God or nature or environmental factors.
Many people make the assumption that all medieval philosophers were
metaphysical libertarians. Whereas Protestant theology classically
promotes theological determinism, the view that everything human
beings do is foreordained by God, Catholic theology classically
promotes the view that God gave human beings free will. While it is
true that every medieval philosopher endorses the thesis that human
beings are free, few are able to maintain a commitment to free will,
defined as the ability to do other than we do given the same
antecedent conditions. The reason is that so many other theological
and philosophical doctrines conflict with it.
Consider divine foreknowledge. If God is omniscient, then he knows
everything that you are ever going to do. Suppose he knows that you
will eat an apple for lunch tomorrow. How then is it possible for you
to choose not to eat an apple for lunch tomorrow? Even if God does not
force you in any way, it seems his present knowledge of your future
requires that your choices are already determined.
Medieval philosophers struggle with this and other conflicts with free
will. Most give up on metaphysical libertarianism in favor of some
form of compatibilism. This is to say they maintain that our choices
are free even though they are determined by antecedent conditions.
In his Sentences Commentary, Peter John Olivi makes a long and
impassioned argument for an unadulterated metaphysical libertarian
conception of free will. Ockham embraces Olivi's position without ever
making much of an argument for it. In Ockham's view, we experience
freedom. We can no more dismiss this experience than we can dismiss
our experience of the external world. Ockham goes to great lengths to
adjust his account of divine foreknowledge and anything else that
might otherwise threaten free will in order to accommodate it. He
writes,
The will is freely able to will something and not to will it. By this
I mean that it is able to destroy the willing that it has and produce
anew a contrary effect, or it is equally able in itself to continue
that same effect and not produce a new one. It is able to do all of
this without any prior change in the intellect, or in the will, or in
something outside them. The idea is that the will is equal for
producing and not producing because, with no difference in antecedent
conditions, it is able to produce and not to produce. It is poised
equally over contrary effects in such a way in fact, that it is able
to cause love or hatred of something…. To deny every agent this equal
or contrary power is to destroy every praise and blame, every council
and deliberation, every freedom of the will. Indeed, without it, the
will would not make a human being free any more than appetite does an
ass. [Opera Philosophica, pp. 319-21]
Ockham's reference to an ass here is significant in connection with
the famous thought experiment known as Buridan's Ass.
Jean Buridan was a younger contemporary of Ockham's. Although he
embraced and elaborated Ockham's nominalism, he openly rejected
metaphysical libertarianism, arguing that the human intellect
determines the human will. He may have engaged in a public debate with
Ockham over the nature of human freedom. At any rate, his name somehow
became associated with the following thought experiment.
Imagine a hungry donkey poised between two equally delicious piles of
hay. The donkey has reason to eat the hay, but because he caught sight
of both piles at the same time, he has no more reason to approach one
pile than the other. For lack of any way to break the tie, the donkey
starves to death. A human being, in contrast, would never make such an
ass of himself. The reason is that, in human beings, the will is not
determined by the intellect. Free will is the uniquely human dignity
that enables us to break the tie between two equally reasonable
options.
The French philosopher Pierre Bale (1647-1706) is the first on record
to call this thought experiment "Buridan's Ass." Although Buridan
mentions the case of a dog poised between food and water, he never
discusses the case of the donkey in connection with freedom. It is
therefore somewhat of a puzzle why the thought experiment is named
after him. Interestingly, Peter John Olivi does discuss the case of
the donkey in connection with freedom, and we see Ockham echoing that
text here.
So, in the end, Ockham's ethics is dictated by his empiricism. We
experience free will. Therefore, free will is at the core of human
nature. Theology tells us that we are made in God's image. Therefore,
free will is at the core of God's nature. But theology also tells us
that God is always good. Therefore, God's free will must be the
objective determinant of goodness.
Setting aside his divine command theory, Ockham's ethics is rather
unremarkable, coming to more or less the same thing as that of his
colleagues who reject divine command theory. One might think Ockham
takes a long way around the barn just to arrive at yet another
conventional account of Christian virtue! But Ockham never minds
taking the long way around for the sake of consistency. We see the
same unflagging determination in his political theory
8. Political Theory
Although Ockham was summoned to the papal court in Avignon to defend a
number of "suspect theses" extracted from his work, largely concerning
the sacrament of the altar, he was never found guilty of heresy, and
his conflict with the papacy ultimately had nothing to do with the
sacrament of the altar. While staying in Avignon, Ockham met Michael
Cesena (1270-1342), the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, who
was there in protest of the Pope's recent pronouncements about the
Franciscan vow of poverty. Michael asked Ockham to study these
pronouncements, whereupon Ockham joined the protest and soon became
irretrievably entangled in a political imbroglio. Leaving academia
behind for good, he nevertheless marshaled his central philosophical
insights into the debate. While Ockham was not allowed to publish his
political treatises, they circulated widely underground, indirectly
influencing major developments in political thought.
a. Rights
Who would have guessed that at the root of these developments lay the
Franciscan vow of poverty? In Matthew 19, Jesus says to a man, "If you
wish to be perfect, go, sell all you have, give your money to the
poor, and come, and follow me." The man who was to become St. Francis
of Assisi (1182-1226) took these instructions personally. Raised in a
wealthy family, St. Francis gave up the worldly life, founding the
Order of the Friar Minor, and requiring all its members to take a vow
of poverty. From the very beginning there was controversy over what
exactly this vow entailed. By the 1320s, various factions had come to
the breaking point.
Michael Cesena promoted the "radical" interpretation, according to
which Franciscans should not only live simply but also own nothing,
not even the robes on their backs. Pope Nicholas III (1210/1220-1280)
had sanctioned this interpretation by arranging for the papacy
officially to possess everything that the Franciscans used, including
the very food they ate. Living in absolute poverty enabled the
Franciscans to preach convincingly against avarice, and, much to the
chagrin of Pope John XXII (1244-1334), raise questions about the
ever-expanding papal palace in Avignon.
John was determined to amass great wealth for the church and the
Franciscan vow of poverty was getting in the way. Trained as a lawyer,
John worked up a good argument for revoking Nicholas's arrangement.
Given that the Franciscans enjoyed exclusive use of the donations they
received, they were the de facto owners. Papal "ownership" of
Franciscan property was ownership in name alone.
As a nominalist, however, Ockham was in an excellent position to show
why reducing something to a name is not the same as reducing it to
nothing at all. A name is a mental concept, and a mental concept is an
intention. Ockham set out to show that the intention to use is
distinct from the intention to own.
Ockham derives his definition of ownership from metaphysical
libertarianism. Ownership is not just a conventional relationship
established through social agreement. It is a natural relationship
that arises through the act of making something of your own free will.
Free will naturally confers ownership because it implies sole
responsibility. Suppose you freely make a choice. Since you could have
done otherwise, you are the true cause of the result. To own something
is to do what you will with it.
The Franciscans do not do as they will with the donations given to
them, according to Ockham, but rather as the owner wills. They are
therefore merely using the donations and do not own them. Granted, in
normal practice, this distinction may be entirely undetectable,
because the will of the owner matches that of the user. But if a
conflict of wills should arise, the distinction would become readily
apparent. Suppose someone donates some cloth to the Order intending it
to be used for robes. The friars must use it for robes even if they
would rather use it for something else. And if the donor wants the
cloth back even after it is made into robes, the friars will have no
basis for refusing and no legal recourse. Ockham puts the crucial
point in terms of crucial language: the owner retains a right (ius) to
what he owns.
The notion of a right is one of the most important features of modern
political theory. Its emergence in the history of Western thought is a
long and complicated story. Nevertheless, the Franciscan poverty
debate is standardly considered an important watershed, in which
Ockham played a significant role.
b. Separation of Church and State
Ockham extends his commitment to poverty beyond just the Franciscan
order, convinced that wealth is an inappropriate source of power for
the Catholic Church as a whole. In his view, the Catholic Church has a
spiritual power which sets it apart from the secular world. This
conviction leads Ockham to propose the doctrine that was to become the
foundation of the United States Constitution: separation of church and
state.
Throughout the Middle Ages, popes and emperors vied for supremacy
across Europe. The political momentum was split in two directions and
it was not at all clear which way things would go. One side pushed for
hierocracy, where the pope, as the highest authority, appoints the
emperor. The other side pushed for imperialism, where the emperor, as
the highest authority, appoints the pope. Often the pushing came to
shoving; it seemed there would be no end to the ill will and
bloodshed.
Ockham boldly proposes a third alternative: the pope and the emperor
should be separate but equal, each supreme in his own domain. This was
an outrageous suggestion, unwelcome on both sides. Ockham's argument
for it stems from reflections that foreshadow the "state of nature"
thought experiments of premier modern political theorists Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778).
In the Garden of Eden, God gave the earth to human beings to use to
their common benefit. As long as we were willing to share there was no
need for property among us. After the fall, however, human beings
became selfish and exploitative. Laws became necessary to restrain
immoderate appetite for secular or "temporal" goods and to prevent the
neglect of their management. Since laws are useless without the
ability to enforce them, we arrived at the need for secular power. The
function of the secular power is to punish law breakers and in general
coerce everyone into obeying the law.
By renouncing property, the Franciscans were attempting to live as God
originally intended. In a perfect world, there would be no need for
property and the coercive authority it spawns. All Christians should
aspire to this anarchic utopia, even though they may never fully
achieve it. In the meanwhile, they should avoid mixing the spiritual
and the secular as much as possible. Ockham writes,
For this reason, the head of Christians does not, as a rule, have
power to punish secular wrongs with a capital penalty and other bodily
penalties and it is for thus punishing such wrongs that temporal power
and riches are chiefly necessary; such punishment is granted chiefly
to the secular power. The pope therefore, can, as a rule, correct
wrongdoers only with a spiritual penalty. It is not, therefore,
necessary that he should excel in temporal power or abound in temporal
riches, but it is enough that Christians should willingly obey him. [A
Letter to the Friars Minor and other Writings, p. 204]
For Ockham, the separation of church and state is a separation of the
ideal and the real.
Ockham mentions democracy only in passing, arguing in favor of
monarchy as the best form of secular government. Moreover, he finds
representational forms of government objectionable on the grounds that
there is no such thing as a common will. Ockham is not holding out for
a superhuman leader. On the contrary, he seems to think that a fairly
ordinary, good man can make a decent king. One wonders if Louis of
Bavaria, to whose protection he and Michael fled, inspired this
confidence. Perhaps Ockham is content with monarchy because, in his
view, the secular world will always be intrinsically flawed. He sets
his hopes instead on the spiritual world, and this is why he was so
bitterly disappointed in Pope John XXII.
c. Freedom of Speech
Ockham's battle with the papacy continued after John's death through
two successive popes. Although Ockham never came to criticize the
institution of the papacy itself, as would later Protestant thinkers,
he did accuse the popes he opposed of heresy and called for their
expulsion. Ironically, Ockham's extensive analysis of the concept of
heresy turns into a defense of free speech.
In keeping with his doctrine of the separation of church and state,
Ockham maintains that the pope, and only the pope, has the right to
level spiritual penalties, and only spiritual penalties, against
someone who knowingly asserts theological falsehoods and refuses to be
corrected. A man might unknowingly assert a theological falsehood a
thousand times, however. As long as he is willing to be corrected, he
should not be judged a heretic, especially by the pope.
Ockham's political treatises are strewn with biblical exegesis, often
glaringly ad hoc and sometimes quite interesting, as in the present
case. In Matthew 28:20 Jesus promises his disciples: "I will be with
you always, to the end of the age." This text traditionally provided
justification for the doctrine of papal infallibility according to
which the pope cannot be wrong when speaking about official church
matters. Ockham rejects this doctrine, however, arguing that the
minimum required for Jesus to keep his promise is that one human being
remain faithful at any given time, and this one could be anyone, even
a single baptized infant. This implies that the entire institution of
the church could become completely corrupt. As a result, any
theological claim, no matter how ancient or universally accepted, is
always open for dispute.
Even more interesting, however, is Ockham's view of non-theological
speech. He writes that
…purely philosophical assertions which do not pertain to theology
should not be solemnly condemned or forbidden by anyone, because in
connection with such assertions anyone at all ought to be free to say
freely what pleases him, [Dialogus, I.2.22]
This statement long predates the Areopagitica of John Milton
(1608-1674), which is typically heralded as the earliest defense of
free speech in Western history.
Ockham's contributions in political thought are less known and
appreciated than they may have been if he had been able to publish
them. Likewise, there is no telling what he might have accomplished in
philosophy if he had been allowed to carry on with his academic
career. Ockham was ahead of his time. His role in history was to make
way for new ideas, boldly planting seeds that grew and flourished
after his death.
9. References and Further Reading
a. Ockham's Works in Latin
William of Ockham, 1967-88. Opera philosophica et theologica. Gedeon
Gál, et al., ed. 17 vols. St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: The Franciscan
Institute.
William of Ockham, 1956-97. Opera politica. H. S. Offler, et al. ed. 4
vols. Vols. 1-3, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956-74.
Vol. 4, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
William of Ockham, 1995-still in progress. Dialogus. John Kilcullen
and John Scott, et al. ed. & trans.
http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/ockdial.html
b.Ockham's Works in English Translation
Adams, Marilyn McCord, and Norman Kretzmann, trans. 1983. William of
Ockham: Predestination, God's Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents.
2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Birch, T. Bruce, ed. & trans. 1930. The De sacramento altaris of
William of Ockham. Burlington, Iowa: Lutheran Literary Board.
Boehner, Philotheus, ed. & trans. 1990. William of Ockham:
Philosophical Writings. Rev. ed. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett.
Davies, Julian, trans. 1989. Ockham on Aristotle's Physics: A
Translation of Ockham's Brevis Summa Libri Physicorum. St.
Bonaventure, N. Y.: The Franciscan Institute.
Freddoso, Alfred J., and Francis E. Kelly, trans. 1991. Quodlibetal
Questions. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Freddoso, Alfred J., and Henry Schuurman, trans. 1980. Ockham's Theory
of Propositions: Part II of the Summa logicae. Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press.
Kilcullen, John, and John Scott, ed. & trans. 1995-still in progress.
Dialogue on the Power of the Emperor and the Pope.
http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/ockdial.html
Kluge, Eike-Henner W., trans. 1973-74. "William of Ockham's Commentary
on Porphyry: Introduction and English Translation." Franciscan Studies
33, pp. 171-254, and 34, pp. 306-82.
Loux, Michael J. 1974. Ockham's Theory of Terms: Part I of the Summa
Logicae. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
McGrade, A. S., and John Kilcullen, ed. & trans. 1992. A Short
Discourse on the Tyrannical Government over Things Divine and Human.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McGrade, A. S., and John Kilcullen, ed. & trans. 1995. A Letter to the
Friars Minor and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Spade, Paul Vincent, 1994. Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of
Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham.
Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett.
Wood, Rega, trans. 1997. Ockham on the Virtues. West Lafayette, Ind.:
Purdue University Press.
c. Books about Ockham
Adams, Marilyn McCord, 1987. William Ockham. 2 vols., Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. (2nd rev. ed., 1989.)
Copleston, F.C., 1953. History of Philosophy, Volume III: Ockham to
Suarez. London: Search Press.
Goddu, André, 1984. The Physics of William of Ockham. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Hirvonen, Vesa, 2004. Passions in William Ockham's Philosophical
Psychology. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kaye, Sharon M. and Robert Martin, 2001. On Ockham. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Maurer, Armand, 1999. The Philosophy of William of Ockham in the Light
of its Principles. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
McGrade, A. S., 1974. The Political Thought of William of Ockham.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spade, Paul, ed., 1999. The Cambridge Companion to Ockham. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Panaccio, Claude, 2004. Ockham on Concepts. Burlington: Ashgate.
Tauchau, Katherine H., 1988. Vision and Certitude in the Age of
Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics,
1250-1345. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
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