“ God can do everything that, when done, does not include contradiction” William of Ockham
Ockham could be said to be a rather original philosopher, although many of the themes he will address had been initiated by Duns Escoto, and other authors (particularly the logic of the 13th century).
Ockham developed themes that characterized the concerns of intellectuals of his time and represents a turning point in the history of scholastic thought. Ockham is no longer a systematic thinker as Thomas Aquinas was, his role is fundamentally that of a critic. His criticism will produce the independence of philosophy that will begin to focus on other topics such as Nature.
The fudamental principles addressed by Ockham are considered by him as “Aristotelian”, however, they represent in practice a clear break with the previous Greek and scholastic tradition. Indeed, they represent an innovation within the history of philosophy.
Principle of Economy (Ockham Knife)
It is a methodological principle that makes it possible to simplify the explanations as much as possible by eliminating numerous concepts used by scholastics during the previous period, because it considered it important to eliminate everything that was not evident in intuition or what was necessary to explain reality.
What is claimed is the non-existence of “universal” natures or essences common to several individuals. There are nothing but unique things that are worth themselves.
For a thinker like Thomas Aquinas, the bojeto proper to human ethension was the essence of sensitive things, the sigular, could only be known “indirectly”. But according to this new theoretical framework, if the singular can only be known through experience, the direct and immediate knowledge of the sigular is what allows us to know whether the thing exists or not. Thomas recognized the existence, moreover, of sensitive intuition, but for him, understanding could only be known through abstention (not by intuition), Ockham, on the contrary, postulates an intellectual intuition that allows understanding the knowledge of singular realiades as existing.
If everything that exists is unique, what value can a universal concept have?
Ockham continues, therefore, the tradition of nominalists like Abelard who prolonging the logic of the thirteenth century, will say that nothing universal exists outside the soul. It insists, first of all, on the logical function of the concept. Concepts are natural signs of things, that is, they are not conventionally established as words but are produced in the soul by things themselves. A universal concept replaces a set of similar individuals in proposition.
Nominalism leads to the affirmation of the absolute prrminence in God (and therefore also in man) of the will over intelligence. This idea generates a break with the Greek concept (and scholastic, by assimilation of Greek philosophy) of a God of “pure thought” to which the divine will is subordinate. For Ockham, God is primarily omnipotent, nothing limits his will. From this happens the absolute contingency of the order of the world. The world is as it is by the desire of God, there is no intelligible, rational and necessary order... the order of the world cannot be reduced to rational principles. That is why the importance of intuition: it makes us know what actually exists.
Ockham's empiricism and nominalism generate a frank break in the relationship between thinking and being, characteristic of Greek-scholastic philosophy (in fact, these are rationalist systems). Thinking is disconnected from being and from substance, metaphysical questions are limited to theology.
Subtanence is no longer but the unknown substance of cavities revealed by experience, and can only be conceived:
Negative: “what is not in another”
Relative: “subject of accidents”
Nor can it be known by experience (the only valid mode of knowledge), the causal relationship itself mass, so the concept of cause is also problematic. In the same way, the final causality is nothing but a kind of unneceary metaphor to explain the natural concoctions. Ockham, with this, denies the two fundamental principles of tomist metaphysics:
The distinction between essential-existence
The analogy of being
In the same vein, Ockham will affirm that the evidence of God's existence lacks true demonstrative character, they are only probable arguments. Indeed, the essential principles of the five pathways (causality and the impossibility of an infinite number of causes) are not evident. Even if it was accepted that the existence of a motionless first motor could be demonstrated, it could not be proved that it was unique or that it coincided with God. Similarly, neither is it possible to rationally demonstrate any of the attributes of divinity, again, Thomas enters the realm of probabilities.
For Ockham, divine understanding is not superior to will, or vice versa, because he is not really understanding or will: they are just names that we give to the divine essence from its effects. This explains the voluntarism that characterizes his thinking.
Ockham's voluntarism greatly accentuates divine omnipotence, significantly reducing the role of reason, expanding the exclusive field of religious beliefs and consummating the rupture of philosophy with theology. But it would be hasty (and anachronistic) to consider this as an attack on Christian dogma, since on the contrary what is promised is a cleansing of the faith from those philosphophic adherents of Hellenism.
In the same way, Ockham was interested in a clear depration between the Church and the State, a cleansing... that is, promoting the reform of the Church along the lines advocated by the Franciscans. The Pope would only be recognized as moderator in the spiritual field, defending a secular conception of society. The Pope does not possess “dominative” power but is at the service of the community of the faithful. Papal infallibility is questioned, only the community of faithful is.
Ockham's political doctrine seeks to overcome the spiritual from the temporal, just as it sought to separate theology from philosophy with a clear intention: less to defend the interests of the emperor and more to guarantee the spirituality of the community.