WILLIAM OF OCKHAM

William of Ockham was a Franciscan philosopher, theologian, and political writer. He is 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. 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.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. 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.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. 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. 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 humans. 

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. 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.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. They stayed in Pisa 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.Excommunicated after his flight from Avignon, Ockham maintained the same basic position on poverty 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. 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.