ABOUT WILLIAM OF OCKHAM
ROBERT WAGNER
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William of Ockham also called WILLIAM OCKHAM,
Ockham also spelled OCCAM, byname VENERABILIS
INCEPTOR (Latin: "Venerable Enterpriser"),
or DOCTOR INVINCIBILIS ("Invincible
Doctor"), (b. c. 1285, Ockham, Surrey,
Eng. - d. 1347/49, Munich, Bavaria [now in
Germany]), 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.
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William of Ockham, one of the Doctors of
the Church, lived in England as a Franciscan
theologian and writer. He developed a unique
and controversial philosophy which trimmed
much from Aristotle's system of the world.
These radical beliefs made an enemy of John
Lutterell, the chancellor of Oxford at the
time. Lutterell sent a document to Pope John
XII criticizing Ockham's work. Ockham was
not officially condemned by the papal office
at this juncture. Ockham later attacked John
XII for errors in some of his papal bulls,
going so far as to call him a heretic. He
and two other friars fled to Italy (at this
time the papacy was in Avaigion, France)
and were excommunicated from the church.
What is particularly interesting in the Galilean
context is that while Ockham was persecuted,
imprisioned, and finally excommunicated during
his lifetime; he has since risen to such
high regard in the church to be deemed a
Doctor. Change within the church is slow,
and often the ideas initially rejected by
the Church may be gradually incorporated
into its theological tradition, and enemies
of the Church may become its new heroes.
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 - know 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. (P. D. V.)
Bibliography Arthur Stephen McGrade, The
Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal
and Institutional Principles (1974), focuses
on Ockham as a political theorist and activist.
Gordon Leff, William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis
of Scholastic Discourse (1975), examines
his system of thought. Marilyn McCord Adams,
William Ockham, 2 vol.
(1987), discusses in detail his thinking
on a variety of complex topics.
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