Philosophical Writings

by William of Ockham, Philotheus Boehner O.F.M. (Translator)

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Christianity, Classics, Nonfiction, Religion, Theology, Medieval

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

William of Ockham (also Occam, Hockham, or any of several other spellings, IPA: /ˈɒkəm/) (c. 1288 - c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, from Ockham, a small village in Surrey, near East Horsley. He is considered, along with Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Averroes (ibn Rushd in the Middle East), to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although commonly known for Occam's Razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is April 10.

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophies centered on epistemology and exercises in logic are not always the most enthralling, but Ockham is good reading in order to keep one's deductive reasoning sharp. Aquinas is very similar, as are most of the medieval philosophers. They usually tackle the same questions without necessarily coming to the same conclusions. The Aristotelian language does wear on the patience from time to time. I'm more of a Platonist, but I am willing to grant Aristotle some amount of respect.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ockham’s nominalism: the idea of essences is incoherent since they’re both one thing and many things; so, abstract terms are parts of our language, not real objects.

[Gastjäle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 / 5.0

Ockham seems to bring some common sense and keen perspicacity where Aquinas pontificated about all kinds of towering systems and endless subdivisions. First of all, his introduction of nominalism was a great feat of intelligence, refuting the strange idea about understanding and forms of Aristotle & co., instead coming up with the plausible explanation that us humans merely combine our intuitions into concepts, wherewith we discuss, propose and research. When one thinks about it, Ockham seemed to be paving the way for Kant's own psychological disquisitions and, more obviously, Wittgenstein's linguistic world-building and his propositional truths – a nice gesture of relevance to an obscure medieval Franciscan.

The most interesting bits of this compilation were the chapters on logic and mental acts. Not because they were hugely groundbreaking for me personally, but because they were expressed so very clearly and ingeniously. Ockham clearly had a knack for logical thought, and his points about interdisciplinarity (that is, pointing out how useless it's to assign but "one" subject of research for different fields of research) and how sciences, at the end of the day, deal with mental concepts (without resorting to solipsism in any way - it's actually common sense: whenever we perform a mental act of forming a concept, we abstract from our particular intuitions, thus forming mental images of more general nature: that is how scientific hypotheses are made, and how we form ideas about forms of life, particles, numbers etc.), and how things are different in themselves (not by virtue of the differences we assign them), were inspiring in their ostensible simplicity. As we all know, Ockham was adamant about the need to slim propositions down to their essentials, using his razor to cut off all superfluous matter where fewer things suffice.

Ockham also expressed a very Proustian thing in supposing that the object of, say, sight is actually different if you change your angle or proximity in relation to it. The thing itself remains the same most likely, yet the way you perceive it and how you take in the intuition is obviously altered, making the world a great place for exploration if one can put the concepts aside for a short while.

Furthermore, perhaps the greatest thing he pointed out was that the words describe things secondarily, mental concepts primarily. Once again, a very simple yet a very sobering thought.

With his fine logic and knowledge, it's a shame that Ockham, too, resorted to Aristotlean mysticism that seemed to be all the rage in the Middle Ages. We have find and sharp minds trying to wrestle with problems they can't solve without cheating a bit in their argumentation. I'm naturally talking about God and his existence. A fascinating topic, yet it seems to me that it's the more fascinating the less people try to employ normal, secular reasoning for that particular conundrum. I like seeing wise minds at it, but I don't like seeing such brilliant thinkers make such pathetic cock-ups they wouldn't otherwise do, were they freed of their dogma.

The good thing about Ockham is that he actually pointed out that sin comes from God. "Omnis res quae est peccatum, esto a Deo, tamen Deus non peccat, quia non tenetur ad oppositum, cum nullius debitor sit". Here, the problem lies in how he hurriedly proceeds to save God's skin by explaining that He doesn't sin because he is not bound to the opposite of sin, and is no one's debtor. Well, later on, he justifies a certain argument by stating: "Sin is sinful because it's voluntary." Tut. Ockham, too, had the strange idea that one could infer God's existence from ours, not really providing any proper explanation why His being wouldn't be different from that of Mankind. Furthermore, he even oversteps his own nominalism at one point, having first stated that "whiteness = white is false", yet later on claiming that "blind = blindness".

Ockham refutes the idea that the soul is the form of Man. Understandable enough, yet he doesn't adduce that good evidence for it: why couldn't something incorruptible be the form of something corruptible? He also proceeds to criticise the Peripatetic idea of motion, yet doesn't furnish the reader with any intelligible alternative. I mean, what the devil is this supposed to mean: "For motion is nothing more than this; the movable body coexists with different parts of space, so that it does not coexist with any single one while contrary statements are made true." I know he warred against the idea of air being the mover, or there being a quality of impetus imparted to the object of movement, but this is simply abstrusely put. He also goes on to prove that it's impossible not to love God ethically, because if he ordered you not to love him, you would comply because of your love... yet the weakness of this argument is easily seen. Finally, and mayhap most gravely, there is also the infuriating adherence to the idea of perfection which kind of plagued the Medieval thought: not really substantiated at any point, yet it's still clung to.

It's probably easy to see from the list-like quality of the second part of my review, that I felt a bit peeved with William towards the end. And such a surmise is true. But it's not because he was stupid in my opinion, it was because he didn't deserve to make such silly gaffes. For despite his dogma and the zeitgeist of the times, he was a very influential and a very original thinker.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book and I did not give it enough attention to understand it. A thorough understanding of Aristotle, medieval philosophy, and medieval theology would certainly help. Perhaps in another decade when I have the right background, this book will make more sense!