Medieval France
(William Occam; ca. 1285–1347). Born in Ockham in Surrey, England, William entered a Franciscan convent at an early age. In 1306, he was ordained subdeacon at Southwark in London and began his education at Oxford, where he lectured on Peter Lombard’s Sententiae from 1317 to 1319. John Luttrell, the chancellor at Oxford, opposed Ockham’s views. Pope John XXII called him to Avignon in 1323/24. A committee investigated Ockham’s works and censured fifty-one propositions but did not formally condemn him. In 1327, he met Michael of Cesena, the minister-general of the Franciscan order and leader of the Spiritual Franciscans. Cesena requested Ockham to examine John XXII’s constitutions on Franciscan poverty. Ockham declared them full of error and the following year fled Avignon with Cesena and others. He was excommunicated in 1328. He joined the emperor Louis of Bavaria in his dispute with the pope and in 1330 settled at the Franciscan convent in Munich. In 1331, Ockham was expelled from the order and sentenced to imprisonment. He died in Munich in 1347, still under Louis’s protective care.
Ockham’s writings fall into three stages corresponding to his major residences: Oxford (1306/07–23), Avignon (1323–28), and Germany (1330–47). At Oxford and Avignon, his writings include his commentary on the Sententiae, later published in two parts: the Ordinatio, his lectures on the first book, and the Reportatio, comprising notes taken at his lectures. He also composed commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon; Summa logicae, his major statement on logic; seven quodlibetals; and treatises on the Body of Christ, on the eucharist, and on predestination. After his departure from Avignon in 1328, he wrote works against the Avignon papacy, the chief ones being Opus nonaginta dierum, about papal errors regarding poverty; Dialogus inter magistrum et discipulum (1333–47); eight quaestiones on papal authority (1340); and a treatise on the respective powers of emperor and pope (ca. 1347).
Ockham was principally a theologian, vigorously exploring the philosophical limits of each epistemological, logical, or metaphysical issue, often to see more clearly the theological application. He rejected the older Platonic Realism and the via antiqua of the Aristotelians to pursue a via moderna, a path of demonstration and the near-autonomy of faith. He insisted upon a method of economy of explanation, later termed “Ockham’s razor.” With the nominalists, he contested the reality of universals and affirmed the fundamental reality of particulars for the human mind. His own solution to the relationship between universals and particulars is often called “conceptualist” instead of “nominalist,” because he viewed concepts not merely as creatures of the mind but rather as entities identical with the abstractive cognition by which the mind considers individual objects in a certain way. With Duns Scotus, he asserted the utter transcendence and unique necessity and freedom of God in contrast with the contingency of all else, including so-called natural and moral laws. He argued the distinction between God’s absolute power and that of his ordained power, manifest in his decrees, by which God limits himself to operate within ordinations he established. Ockham also contributed to medieval and early-modern political theory and ecclesiology. He influenced conciliarism, and his theological legacy reached to Pierre d’Ailly, Gabriel Biel, and Martin Luther. He attacked the wealth of the church, challenged the notions of papal infallibility and plenitude of power, upheld the right of imperial election apart from papal interference, and conceded to the emperor the responsibility to depose a heretical pope. He maintained that the papacy was not established by Christ, that the general council was superior to the papacy, but that the pope possessed an ordinary executive authority unless he were heretical.
H.Lawrence Bond
[See also: AVIGNON PAPACY; D’AILLY, PIERRE; DUNS SCOTUS, JOHN; PHILOSOPHY; SCHOLASTICISM; THEOLOGY; UNIVERSITIES]
Ockham, William of. Opera philosophica, ed. Philotheus Boehner et al. 3 vols.
St. Bonaventure: Editiones Instituti Franciscani Universitatis S.Bonaventurae, 1974–85.
——. Opera theologica, ed. Gedeon Gál et al. 10 vols. St. Bonaventure: Editiones Instituti Franciscani Universitatis S. Bonaventurae, 1967–86.
——. Opera politica, ed. Jeffrey G.Sikes et al. 3 vols. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1940- .
——. William of Ockham. Philosophical Writings: A Selection, ed. and trans. Philotheus Boehner. rev. ed. Stephen F. Brown. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990.
Adams, Marilyn McCord. William Ockham. 2 vols. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987.
Baudry, León. Guillaume d’Occam: sa vie, ses œuvres, ses idées sociales et politiques. Paris: Vrin, 1949, Vol. 1: L’homme et les œuvres.
Boehner, Philotheus. Collected Articles on Ockham, ed. Eligii M.Buytaert. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute, 1958.
McGrade, Arthur Stephen. The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional Principles. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
Moody, Ernest A. The Logic of William Ockham. London: Sheed and Ward, 1935.
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