In this work Ockham proposes a theory of simple predication, which he uses in explicating the truth conditions of progressively more complicated kinds of propositions. His discussion includes what he takes to be the correct semantic treatment of quantified propositions, past tense and future tense propositions, and modal propositions, all of which are receiving much attention from contemporary philosophers. He also illustrates the use of exponential analysis to deal with propositions that prove troublesome in both semantic theory and other (...) disciplines, such as metaphysics, physics, and theology. This type of analysis plays an essential role in his substantive philosophical and theological works, and in many cases then can hardly be understood without a prior acquaintance with this section of the Summa. An introduction by Alfred J. Freddoso clarifies and summarizes Ockham's theory, discusses certain philosophical problems which it engenders, and proposes new interpretations for parts of it. The essay will be helpful both to those interested in Ockham as a historical figure and to those interested in his substantive systematic contributions to logical theory. (shrink)

This volume contains selections of Ockham's philosophical writings which give a balanced introductory view of his work in logic, metaphysics, and ethics.

The Franciscan William of Ockham (c.1285-c.1347) was the greatest theologian and philosopher of the first half of the fourteenth century. Spurred on by the activities of a papacy which he saw as destroying the very foundations of his Order, he devoted the last part of his life to examining the extent of papal power over Christians and its relationship to the secular government of people. On the Power of Emperors and Popes (1347) is his last work. Short, passionate (...) and lucid, it represents a distillation of his thought on these questions and forms an excellent and accessible introduction to his political thought as a whole. The extensive new annotations to the text bring to light the range of sources on which Ockham drew, while the new introduction places the work in its historical context and relates it to other works of medieval Franciscan political discourse. Translated here into English for the first time, the work will be of interest to all students and researchers in the field of medieval political thought. --the first English translation of Ockham's classic work, plus extensive new introduction, textual annotation, and bibliography --modern editorial apparatus connects the work with the whole body of Ockham's political thought --the new annotation provides historical and intellectual context and translations of Ockham's source references. (shrink)

This volume contains selections of Ockham's philosophical writings which give a balanced introductory view of his work in logic, metaphysics, and ethics. This edition includes textual markings referring readers to appendices containing changes in the Latin text and alterations found in the English translation that have been made necessary by the critical edition of Ockham’s work published after Boehner prepared the original text. The updated bibliography includes the most important scholarship produced since publication of the original edition.

INTRODUCTION OCKHAM'S LIFE AND THE DATE OF THE TREATISE William Ockham, a highly influential philosopher of the fourteenth century and one of the most ...

This book offers the first English translation of the _Quodlibetal Questions _of William of Ockham —reflections on a variety of topics in logic, ontology, natural philosophy, philosophical psychology, moral theory, and theology by one of the preeminent thinkers of the Middle Ages. It is based on the recent critical edition of Ockham’s theological and philosophical works.

William of Ockham (d. 1347) was among the most influential and the most notorious thinkers of the late Middle Ages. In the twenty-seven questions translated in this volume, most never before published in English, he considers a host of theological and philosophical issues, including the nature of virtue and vice, the relationship between the intellect and the will, the scope of human freedom, the possibility of God's creating a better world, the role of love and hatred in practical (...) reasoning, whether God could command someone to do wrong, and more. In answering these questions, Ockham critically engages with the ethical thought of such predecessors as Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus. Students and scholars of both philosophy and historical theology will appreciate the accessible translations and ample explanatory notes on the text. Eric W. Hagedorn is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Norbert College, Wisconsin. He has published a number of articles and book reviews on medieval philosophy of mind, language, and logic in journals including Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. (shrink)

In his philosophy, William of Ockham (1285-1347) offered an important and detailed response to the classical argument from the truth of a statement regarding the future to the necessity (unpreventability) of the statement. In this paper, Ockham’s solution and the possible formalisation of it are discussed in terms of modern tense and modal logic. In particular, the famous branching time formalisation suggested by A.N. Prior (1914-19) is discussed. Weaknesses and problems with this suggestion are pointed out, and (...) an alternative formalisation of Ockham’s solution without the use of branching time is presented. (shrink)

The English Franciscan, William of Ockham (c. 1285-1349), was one of the most important thinkers of the later middle ages. Summoned to Avignon in 1324 to answer charges of heresy, Ockham became convinced that Pope John XXII was himself a heretic in denying the complete poverty of Christ and the apostles and a tyrant in claiming supremacy over the Roman empire. Ockham's political writings were a result of these personal convictions, but also include systematic discourses on (...) the basis and functions of spiritual and secular power as well as exhaustive discussions of Franciscan poverty and the general problem of papal heresy. Ockham emerges in this study as a man deeply committed to natural and Christian human rights, who found these fundamental values so seriously menaced in his time that their survival could be assured only by radical, even revolutionary, personal action and by a basic reworking of traditional political thought. (shrink)

The English Franciscan, William of Ockham (c. 1285-1349), was one of the most important thinkers of the later middle agesThis book provides a coherent account of Ockham's aims and the principles operating in all his political works.

William of Ockham on the right to Use Goods Quintessentially medieval—an almost word-for-word refutation of an already prolix defense of several improbationes of earlier papal decrees—its greatest claim to fame has usually been its length, not the content of Ockham's argument. Annabel Brett, for example, concluded in a remarkable study that William of Ockham had failed to adequately answer Pope John XXII's criticism of the Michaelist interpretation of Franciscan poverty. Specifically, she argued that he "failed (...) to isolate a potestas licita which would be a power to perform acts which are licit in the sense of consonant with right reason, but are not strictly just." One could imagine the pope making the very same claim, but this would be to misunderstand Ockham's point. It is true that Ockham probably had little chance of convincing the pope of the coherence of his position. But this is not to say that his position was untenable.A common criticism of Ockham's theory of poverty is that he was, more or less, fighting on John XXII's own terms, which generally also leads to the conclusion that Ockham's theory is deficient in some respect. But if Ockham can be accused of fighting on the pope's ground because he responded to Quia vir reprobus point-by-point, then the pope can equally be accused of fighting on Michaelist ground because he was doing essentially the same thing. Alternatively, this claim might be interpreted as meaning that Ockham accepted as axiomatic certain claims of John XXII and then proceeded to construct an alternate theory to that of the pope's; consequently, this argument would continue, because Ockham could not get past certain foundational statements he was unable to properly address in the pope's claims. It is a corollary of the argument presented here that this was not the case.One of the paradoxes of the Franciscan modus vivendi was that, although their goal was to disengage from the civil order as far as all property relationships went, and despite the fact that Francis strongly commanded all brothers "through obedience" not to ask letters of the Roman curia, it quickly became necessary to have recourse to the papacy for all sorts of things. It is easy to see how this paradoxical relationship with the papacy could lead to trouble for the order, and indeed it was in the course of one of these appeals that the "Franciscan crisis under John XXII" might be said to have begun. The story, recounted by a Minorite who leaves no doubt as to his partisanship, is that when a Franciscan, Berengar Talon , defended a Beguin's view that Christ and his disciples possessed nothing, "either individually or in common, by right of ownership and lordship" against the Dominican inquisitor Jean de Beaune, the latter accused Berengar, too, of heresy. Not surprisingly, given the historical success of this method, Berengar appealed to the pope. As David Burr has said, "John reacted vigorously and, one suspects, enthusiastically." This time around, however, the pope was not so certain that the Franciscan position was the correct one. This appeal served as a pretext for re-opening the poverty "question," even if the ultimate motive for this move remain enigmatic.1 John XXII's Position on UseIf we must continue to guess at what prompted John to broaden his attack, one point jumps out from the first version of Ad conditorem canonum: of the three traditional monastic vows, poverty was the least important. The pope, probably following Hervaeus Natalis, was equally convinced that "the perfection of the Christian life consists principally and essentially in charity," and that.. (shrink)

As a Franciscan friar, student, teacher, philosopher, theologian, and political theorist, William of Ockham was and remains one of the most stimulating thinkers of the Middle Ages. The one consistent characteristic of his professional output—both as a student and later as an opponent of papal authoritarianism—was the provocative nature of his ideas. In required commentaries on standard theological texts as well as in his later, more independently inspired treatises, Ockham demonstrated a genuine talent for suggesting and sustaining (...) a number of original, unorthodox and, occasionally, even outrageous ideas. Accordingly, Ockham holds the distinction of being the most rejected but influential philosopher-theologian of the fourteenth century, an observation that applies to his views on causality in which, for example, Ockham held the principle of action at a distance in order to save the causal account of some phenomena. One of the more interesting distinctions that he made, however, occurs in his treatment of sacramental theology as part of his account of God's causal activity with respect to the sacraments. (shrink)

William of Ockham discussed the fallacy of amphiboly twice in his writings. The first treatment was in his Expositio super libros Elenchorum, where he simply presents Aristotle’s treatment, updates it with some Latin examples, and tells us it is not too important, since we do not often run into cases of ambiguity of thiskind. Later, in his Summa logicae, however, he extends his treatment appreciably. He here includes under ambiguous statements philosophical and theological sentences which are improperly stated. (...) Led by Aristotle, Augustine and Anselm, Ockham finds that in their writings they give us instances of improper statements which need to be restated properly before they can be evaluated as true or false. These leads provide for Ockham a key to unlocking the teaching treasures of the Ancients. (shrink)

In his Dialogus William of Ockham turned from pure philosophy and theology to polemic, in the form of a dialogue between a student and a university master. In Parts 2 and 3, reproduced here, they debate the extent of the Pope's power within the church.

Ockham’s approach to the problem of the instant of change as it is found in the Summa logicae i, chapter 5, and ii, chapter 19, is usually described as “purely logical,” narrowing the treatment of “begins” and “ceases” to simplistic cases. The aim of this paper is to complement our knowledge of Ockham’s position on the problem of the instant of change by analysing the treatment of the problem he gives in his questions on the Physics 98-101. In (...) these passages, Ockham adopts a “physical approach” in order to deal with problems related to the continuity of alteration and the production of the form of the mix from elementary qualities. To solve these problems, he is compelled to give up one of the most important claims at the basis of the logical approach that he adopted in the Summa logicae, namely that the distinction between permanent and successive entities is not relevant in the assignment of truth-conditions to propositions containing the aspectual verbs “beginning” and “ceasing.”. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Simple cognition Ockham's epistemology is founded upon the primacy of individual cognition. As coming first in the order of knowing, ...

William of Ockham is often thought to be the medieval progenitor of divine command theory. This paper contends that the origin of a thoroughgoing and fully reductive DCT position is perhaps more appropriately laid at the feet of Andrew of Neufchateau. We begin with a brief recapitulation of an interpretive dispute surrounding Ockham in order to highlight how there is enough ambiguity in his work about the metaphysical foundations of morality to warrant suspicion about whether he actually (...) stands at the origin of DCT. We then show how all such ambiguity is jettisoned in the work of Andrew, who explicitly rejects a position similar to one plausibly attributable to Ockham and also articulates a fully reductive DCT. (shrink)

William of Ockham was tried for heresy due to his assertion that certain qualities can exist independently of substances. Scholars have assumed he made thisstrange assertion in order to account for the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. I argue, however, that the assertion was philosophically rather than theologically motivated. Ockham develops a nominalist substance ontology, according to which most changes can be explained as the result of local motion. Knowledge and virtue are changes in human beings that cannot (...) be so explained, however, because they are not entirely passive processes. In fact, knowledge and virtue require free will, which could not be considered truly free if it were not an independently existing quality. In this paper, I explain Ockham’s nominalist substance ontology and show how it functions as the sine qua non foundation for his uncompromising commitment to metaphysical libertarianism. (shrink)

William of Ockham was tried for heresy due to his assertion that certain qualities can exist independently of substances. Scholars have assumed he made thisstrange assertion in order to account for the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. I argue, however, that the assertion was philosophically rather than theologically motivated. Ockham develops a nominalist substance ontology, according to which most changes can be explained as the result of local motion. Knowledge and virtue are changes in human beings that cannot (...) be so explained, however, because they are not entirely passive processes. In fact, knowledge and virtue require free will, which could not be considered truly free if it were not an independently existing quality. In this paper, I explain Ockham’s nominalist substance ontology and show how it functions as the sine qua non foundation for his uncompromising commitment to metaphysical libertarianism. (shrink)

Ockham’s ontology of arithmetic, specifically his position on the ontological status of natural numbers, has not yet attracted the attention of scholars. Yet it occupies a central role in his nominalism; specifically, Ockham’s position on numbers constitutes a third part of his ontological reductionism, alongside his doctrines of universals and the categories, which have long been recognized to constitute the first two parts. That is, the first part of this program claims that the very idea of a universal (...) thing is self-contradictory, while the second part asserts that it is more rational to accept only two distinct types of singular things, namely substance and quality. These two elements are incomplete, however, for they do not fully encompass Ockham’s position on what realists take to be abstract objects. For this, one needs the third part of Ockham’s program of ontological reductionism, dealing with numbers, among the most paradigmatic abstract objects for realists. (shrink)

William of Ockham was a medieval English philosopher and theologian. In 1328 Ockham turned away from 'pure' philosophy and theology to polemic. From that year until the end of his life he worked to overthrow what he saw as the tyranny of Pope John XXII and of his successors Popes Benedict XII and Clement VI. This campaign led him into questions of ecclesiology and political philosophy. The Dialogus purports to be a transcript made by a mature student (...) of lengthy discussions between himself and a university master about the various opinions of the learned on the matters disputed between John XXII and the dissident Franciscans. (shrink)

This paper is intended to offer an analysis of William of Ockham's and Guido Terreni's discourses on papal authority; it illuminates how their polemical use of the same authority -- Thomas Aquinas -- resulted in two diametrically opposed views. Guido Terreni's precarious understanding of Aquinas' commentary on the gospel of Luke stretched papal authority on doctrinal definition to the point of papal infallibility. Whereas, William of Ockham's use (and transformation) of Aquinas' idea of the object of (...) explicit faith resulted in a demand that every ecclesiastical authority should have thorough knowledge of the Christian faith and take every caution in doctrinal decision making. The paper shows that, in the context of polemics, Aquinas' ecclesiology was dissolved and different aspects of it were exaggerated by Terreni and Ockham. Thus, the paper also highlights Ockham's polemical skill in turning Aquinas -- the papalists' favourite authority -- against them. (shrink)

In the twenty-seven questions translated in this volume, most never before published in English, William of Ockham considers a host of theological and philosophical issues, including the nature of virtue and vice, the relationship between the intellect and the will, the scope of human freedom, the possibility of God's creating a better world, the role of love and hatred in practical reasoning, whether God could command someone to do wrong, and more.

The book provides the first critical edition of the Dialogus written in Latin by William of Ockham in the 14th century. The dialogue is Ockham's chief work on political philosophy which engages with questions of property rights, natural law, and the theory of nation-states.

William of Ockham discussed the fallacy of amphiboly twice in his writings. The first treatment was in his Expositio super libros Elenchorum, where he simply presents Aristotle’s treatment, updates it with some Latin examples, and tells us it is not too important, since we do not often run into cases of ambiguity of thiskind. Later, in his Summa logicae, however, he extends his treatment appreciably. He here includes under ambiguous statements philosophical and theological sentences which are improperly stated. (...) Led by Aristotle, Augustine and Anselm, Ockham finds that in their writings they give us instances of improper statements which need to be restated properly before they can be evaluated as true or false. These leads provide for Ockham a key to unlocking the teaching treasures of the Ancients. (shrink)

Tractatus de Successivis attributed to William Ockham divides in three parts: on motion, on place and on time. Considerations given there plays important role in conceptualistic metaphysical theory of motion, place and time. Study on Ockham prepares important conclusions concerning critical Aristotelianism in XIV century. Our translation gives also an example of the late scholastic logic and epistemology.

This chapter contains sections titled: Universals, logic, and philosophy of mind Ontological reduction Philosophical theology Ethics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:I. William of Ockham and Mental SynonymyIn recent years an important point of discussion among the scholars of William of Ockham has been the possibility of accounting for a reductionist interpretation of Ockham's mental language. Especially, the debate focused on the legitimacy of eliminating connotative simple terms from mental language by reducing them to their nominal definition. The distinction between absolute and connotative terms (...) plays an important role in Ockham's philosophy of language. Ockham introduces it as a subdivision of the class of categorematic terms, i.e. of the terms provided with signification, and such a distinction overlaps that between concrete and abstract terms. In the Summa Logicae, Part I, chap. 10, devoted to the explanation of such a distinction, Ockham makes three major claims concerning connotative terms.First, unlike absolute simple terms, connotative simple terms signify something primarily and something else secondarily. Paradigmatic examples of connotative simple terms are 'white' and 'father,' while instances of absolute terms are 'animal,' 'man,' and 'whiteness.' The term 'white' is connotative for it signifies something primarily while co-signifying something else secondarily .Second, unlike absolute simple terms, connotative simple terms do not have a real definition but only a nominal one. While a real definition is intended to capture the real essence of the defined thing, a nominal definition is none other than a linguistic explication of a name's signification. Only concrete and abstract terms of the category of substance, and abstract terms of the category of quality, can have a real definition. The reason is that, for Ockham, only individual substances and qualities can exist outside the mind, therefore only such entities can be grasped immediately and directly, by means of acts of intelligible intuitive cognition. Any other term can have only a nominal definition, for each of them can make reference to nothing but to fictive or only putatively existent entities. A nominal definition, in particular, is made in such a way that something is expressed in recto and something else in obliquo . Ockham indicates 'something having whiteness' as the nominal definition of 'white': in it, 'something' is expressed in recto, while 'whiteness' in obliquo.Third and finally, Ockham says that a connotative term has only one nominal definition, while an absolute term can have several real definitions.According to these claims, the problem of the existence of connotative terms in mental language might be reconstructed as follows. Ockham holds to two fundamental tenets about mental language and connotation: first, synonymous terms cannot be found in mental language and second, each connotative simple term can have only one nominal definition, as was said. Ockham is unequivocal about these principles in his works. But if an interpreter also supposes Ockham subscribing to the view that connotative simple terms are synonymous with their nominal definitions, the interpreter must conclude that, for Ockham, connotative simple terms and their nominal definitions cannot both be present in mental language. Nonetheless, since Ockham seems to admit the existence of both connotative simple terms and their nominal definitions in mental language, one of the previous sentences needs to be revised.Up to this day many proposals of revision have been put on the table, but it seems to me that they can be reduced to three principal ones.The first proposal suggests reconsidering claim , while preserving the reasoning -, since - are claims Ockham indisputably states. As is known, this was Paul V. Spade's initial position. The gist of Spade's influential argument was that connotative simple terms cannot exist in mental language for if they did, they would be synonymous with their fully expanded nominal definitions. According to , though, synonymy cannot be found in mental language. But Ockham grants the.. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition of the most important political text by William of Ockham, a significant and influential fourteenth century British philosopher.

Born in England and educated at Oxford, Ockham was the preeminent Franciscan thinker of the mid-fourteenth century. Because of his role in the bitter dispute between the Franciscans and Pope John XXII over evangelical poverty, he was excommunicated in 1328. After that he abandoned philosophy and theology proper, producing instead a series of political tracts on the ecclesiastical and secular power of the papacy.

Historians of fourteenth-century science have long recognized the extraordinary work at both Oxford and Paris in which natural philosophy was becoming highly mathematical. The movement to subject natural philosophy to a mathematical analysis and to quantify such qualities as heat, color, and of course speed surely stands as one of the most significant aspects of late medieval science. Yet as Edith Sylla has observed, because qualities and quantities pertain to different categories in Aristotelian theory, one might expect Aristotelian theorists to (...) avoid quantifying qualities. Even more serious still, the very task of quantifying physical qualities exposes a tension in the nature of science that was discussed first by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics. (shrink)

Among medieval Aristotelians, William of Ockham defends a minimalist account of artifacts, assigning to statues and houses and beds a unity that is merely spatial or locational rather than metaphysical. Thus, in contrast to his predecessors, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, he denies that artifacts become such by means of an advening ‘artificial form’ or ‘form of the whole’ or any change that might tempt us to say that we are dealing with a new thing (res). Rather, he (...) understands artifacts as per accidens composites of parts that differ, but not so much that only divine power could unite them, as in the matter and form of a proper substance. For Ockham, artifacts are essentially rearrangements, via human agency, of already existing things, like the clay shaped by a sculptor into a statue or the stick and bristles and string one might fashion into a broom. Ockham does not think that a new thing is thereby created, although his emphasis on the contribution of human artisans seems to leave questions about the ontological status of their agency open. In any case, there are no such things as natural statues, any more than substances created by human artifice. (shrink)

ence of language that we call “logic” brings forth for the followers of truth, while reason and experience clearly confirm and prove [it].2 Hence Aristotle, the main originator of this science, calls [it] now an introductory method, now a way of knowing, now a science common to all [things] and the way to truth. By these [phrases] he indicates that the entryway to wis-.

Tractatus de Successivis attributed to William Ockham divides in three parts: on motion, on place and on time. Considerations given in the third part, on time, plays important role in conceptualistic metaphysical theory of time. Study on Ockham prepares important conclusions concerning critical Aristotelianism in 14th century. Our translation gives also an example of the late scholastic logic and epistemology.

Tractatus de Successivis attributed to William Ockham divides in three parts: on motion, on place and on time. Considerations given there plays important role in conceptualistic metaphysical theory of motion, place and time. Study on Ockham prepares important conclusions concerning critical Aristotelianism in XIV century. Our translation gives also an example of the late scholastic logic and epistemology.