William
of Ockham
English philosopher
also called William Ockham, Ockham also spelled Occam,
byname Venerabilis Inceptor (Latin: “Venerable
Enterpriser”), or Doctor Invincibilis (“Invincible Doctor”)
born c.
1285, Ockham, Surrey?, Eng.
died 1347/49, Munich, Bavaria [now in Germany]
Main
Franciscan philosopher, theologian, and political writer, a
late scholastic thinker regarded as the founder of a form of
nominalism—the school of thought that denies that universal
concepts such as “father” have any reality apart from the
individual things signified by the universal or general
term.
Early
life
Little is known of Ockham’s childhood. It seems that he
was still a youngster when he entered the Franciscan order.
At that time a central issue of concern in the order and a
main topic of debate in the church was the interpretation of
the rule of life composed by St. Francis of Assisi
concerning the strictness of the poverty that should be
practiced within the order. Ockham’s early schooling in a
Franciscan convent concentrated on the study of logic;
throughout his career, his interest in logic never waned,
because he regarded the science of terms as fundamental and
indispensable for practicing all the sciences of things,
including God, the world, and ecclesiastical or civil
institutions; in all his disputes logic was destined to
serve as his chief weapon against adversaries.
After his
early training, Ockham took the traditional course of
theological studies at the University of Oxford and
apparently between 1317 and 1319 lectured on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard—a 12th-century theologian whose work was
the official textbook of theology in the universities until
the 16th century. His lectures were also set down in written
commentaries, of which the commentary on Book I of the
Sentences (a commentary known as Ordinatio) was actually
written by Ockham himself. His opinions aroused strong
opposition from members of the theological faculty of
Oxford, however, and he left the university without
obtaining his master’s degree in theology. Ockham thus
remained, academically speaking, an undergraduate—known as
an inceptor (“beginner”) in Oxonian language or, to use a
Parisian equivalent, a baccalaureus formatus.
Ockham
continued his academic career, apparently in English
convents, simultaneously studying points of logic in natural
philosophy and participating in theological debates. When he
left his country for Avignon, Fr., in the autumn of 1324 at
the pope’s request, he was acquainted with a university
environment shaken not only by disputes but also by the
challenging of authority: that of the bishops in doctrinal
matters and that of the chancellor of the university, John
Lutterell, who was dismissed from his post in 1322 at the
demand of the teaching staff.
However
abstract and impersonal the style of Ockham’s writings may
be, they reveal at least two aspects of Ockham’s
intellectual and spiritual attitude: he was a
theologian-logician (theologicus logicus is Luther’s term).
On the one hand, with his passion for logic he insisted on
evaluations that are severely rational, on distinctions
between the necessary and the incidental and differentiation
between evidence and degrees of probability—an insistence
that places great trust in man’s natural reason and his
human nature. On the other hand, as a theologian he referred
to the primary importance of the God of the creed whose
omnipotence determines the gratuitous salvation of men;
God’s saving action consists of giving without any
obligation and is already profusely demonstrated in the
creation of nature. The medieval rule of economy, that
“plurality should not be assumed without necessity,” has
come to be known as “Ockham’s razor”; the principle was used
by Ockham to eliminate many entities that had been devised,
especially by the scholastic philosophers, to explain
reality.
Treatise to John XXII
Ockham met John Lutterell again at Avignon; in a
treatise addressed to Pope John XXII, the former chancellor
of Oxford denounced Ockham’s teaching on the Sentences,
extracting from it 56 propositions that he showed to be in
serious error. Lutterell then became a member of a committee
of six theologians that produced two successive reports
based on extracts from Ockham’s commentary, of which the
second was more severely critical. Ockham, however,
presented to the pope another copy of the Ordinatio in which
he had made some corrections. It appeared that he would be
condemned for his teaching, but the condemnation never came.
At the
convent where he resided in Avignon, Ockham met Bonagratia
of Bergamo, a doctor of civil and canon law who was being
persecuted for his opposition to John XXII on the problem of
Franciscan poverty. On Dec. 1, 1327, the Franciscan general
Michael of Cesena arrived in Avignon and stayed at the same
convent; he, too, had been summoned by the pope in
connection with the dispute over the holding of property.
They were at odds over the theoretical problem of whether
Christ and his Apostles had owned the goods they used; that
is, whether they had renounced all ownership (both private
and corporate), the right of property and the right to the
use of property. Michael maintained that because Christ and
his Apostles had renounced all ownership and all rights to
property, the Franciscans were justified in attempting to do
the same thing.
The
relations between John and Michael grew steadily worse, to
such an extent that, on May 26, 1328, Michael fled from
Avignon accompanied by Bonagratia and William. Ockham, who
was already a witness in an appeal secretly drafted by
Michael on April 13, publicly endorsed the appeal in
September at Pisa, where the three Franciscans were staying
under the protection of Emperor Louis IV the Bavarian, who
had been excommunicated in 1324 and proclaimed by John XXII
to have forfeited all rights to the empire. They followed
him to Munich in 1330, and thereafter Ockham wrote fervently
against the papacy in defense of both the strict Franciscan
notion of poverty and the empire.
Instructed
by his superior general in 1328 to study three papal bulls
on poverty, Ockham found that they contained many errors
that showed John XXII to be a heretic who had forfeited his
mandate by reason of his heresy. His status of pseudo-pope
was confirmed in Ockham’s view in 1330–31 by his sermons
proposing that the souls of the saved did not enjoy the
vision of God immediately after death but only after they
were rejoined with the body at the Last Judgment, an opinion
that contradicted tradition and was ultimately rejected.
Nevertheless, his principal dispute remained the question of
poverty, which he believed was so important for religious
perfection that it required the discipline of a theory:
whoever chooses to live under the evangelical rule of St.
Francis follows in the footsteps of Christ who is God and
therefore king of the universe but who appeared as a poor
man, renouncing the right of ownership, submitting to the
temporal power, and desiring to reign on this earth only
through the faith vested in him. This reign expresses itself
in the form of a church that is organized but has no
infallible authority—either on the part of a pope or a
council—and is essentially a community of the faithful that
has lasted over the centuries and is sure to last for more,
even though temporarily reduced to a few, or even to one;
everyone, regardless of status or sex, has to defend in the
church the faith that is common to all.
For Ockham
the power of the pope is limited by the freedom of
Christians that is established by the gospel and the natural
law. It is therefore legitimate and in keeping with the
gospel to side with the empire against the papacy or to
defend, as Ockham did in 1339, the right of the king of
England to tax church property. From 1330 to 1338, in the
heat of this dispute, Ockham wrote 15 or 16 more or less
political works; some of them were written in collaboration,
but Opus nonaginta dierum (“Work of 90 Days”), the most
voluminous, was written alone.
Excommunication
Excommunicated after his flight from Avignon, Ockham
maintained the same basic position after the death of John
XXII in 1334, during the reign of Benedict XII (1334–42),
and after the election of Clement VI. In these final years
he found time to write two treatises on logic, which bear
witness to the leading role that he consistently assigned to
that discipline, and he discussed the submission procedures
proposed to him by Pope Clement. Ockham was long thought to
have died at a convent in Munich in 1349 during the Black
Death, but he may actually have died there in 1347.
Paul
D. Vignaux
