Medieval Europe · c. 1287–1347
William of Ockham
English Franciscan logician who defied the pope
Only individuals exist; universals are concepts that signify many individuals. Do not posit more entities than you need, the principle later called “Ockham’s razor”.
Life and thought
William of Ockham was born in late 1287 or early 1288 in Ockham, Surrey, and became a Franciscan. His lectures at Oxford on Peter Lombard’s Sentences were reported to the pope, and in 1324 he was summoned to Avignon to answer charges of heresy. There he took his order’s side in a dispute over apostolic poverty, judged Pope John XXII himself a heretic, and in 1328 fled with the Franciscan minister-general to the protection of Emperor Louis of Bavaria. He spent his last two decades in Munich writing on politics and church power, and died there in 1347.
In philosophy he was a nominalist: only individual things exist. A universal like “whiteness” is not a thing in many white objects but a concept, a natural sign in the mind that stands for many individuals. Much of the realist apparatus of his predecessors, common natures and formal distinctions, could therefore be cut away, by the principle of economy later called “Ockham’s razor”.
Works
Shaped by
384–322 BCEAristotlePlato’s student, Alexander’s tutor, founder of the LyceumShaped
c. 1300–c. 1360Jean BuridanParis arts master, logician and natural philosopherArgued against
c. 1266–1308John Duns ScotusOckham attacked Scotus’s common natures and formal distinction as realist excess.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1238–1317 (some sources: 1199–1278)MadhvaFounder of Dvaita, the dualist school of Vedāntafl. 14th c., MithilāGaṅgeśa UpādhyāyaFounder of Navya-Nyāya, the ‘new logic’1332–1406Ibn KhaldūnNorth African historian and judge, founder of a science of societyOn the record
Ockham’s Summa Logicae dates from about 1323 and his Quodlibetal Questions from about 1324.
The Summa Logicae is dated c. 1323–25. The seven Quodlibets record disputations held in London in 1322–24, revised in Avignon in 1324–25. Ockham was born in late 1287 or early 1288 and died in Munich on 9/10 April 1347; he fled Avignon on 26 May 1328 and was excommunicated on 6 June.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “William of Ockham”