They joined Louis of Bavaria in Pisa on his return from Rome where he opposed John XXII by installing an antipope and receiving from him the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1330 they journeyed with Louis to Munich, and remaining under his protection, aided him by their counsel and writings in his struggle against John XXII. Though there is no historical evidence of Ockham’s saying "O Emperor, defend me with your sword, and I will defend you with my pen," this famous dictum nevertheless expresses the fact of Ockham’s intellectual leadership in the struggle of the Emperor against the popes. During all this time, however, Ockham professed himself a faithful Catholic, willing to submit to the legitimate authorities of both the Church and the Franciscan Order though there is no evidence of a formal reconciliation. He died at Munich in 1347, probably a victim of the Black Death, and was buried in an old Franciscan Church.1

Works2

- Logic.3 His works on logic include the following: Exposition on the Book of Porphyry (Expositio super librum Porphyrii): On Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories, dealing with the five predicables — genus, species, difference, property, and accident; Exposition on the Book of the Predicaments (Expositio super librum Praedicamentorum): an explanation of Aristotle’s Categories, namely, substance and the nine accidents; Exposition on Two Books of the Perihermenias (Expositio super duos Libros Perihermenias): Aristotle’s On Interpretation,4 treating of propositions, and truth and falsity; Exposition on Two Books of the Elenchus (Expositio super duos libros Elenchorum): Aristotle’s On Sophistical Refutations, analyzing fallacies; Summa of All Logic (Summa totius logicae): Ockham’s main logical work dealing with terms, propositions, and arguments,5 definitely written before 1328 and probably after 1320; Compendium of Logic (Compendium logicae): a condensed presentation of logic, following the outline of the Summa of All Logic; Elementary (Elementarium):6 another systematic work on logic in a more personal style.

- Theology. Ockham’s theological works include the following: Ordination (Ordinatio): the first book of his commentary on the first book of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, dealing with God, was finished before 1323;7 Reportation (Reportatio): questions on the second, third, and fourth books of the Sentences, treating respectively of creation, redemption, and the end of man;8 Seven Quodlibetals (Quodlibeta septem): on far-ranging subjects; First Tractate on Quantity (Primus tractatus de quantitate), and Second Tractate on Quantity (Secundus tractatus de quantitate): these two tractates are on quantity in relation to the Holy Eucharist; Tractate on Predestination and on the Foreknowledge of God and of Future Contingents (Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei et de futuris contingentibus): on predestination and God’s knowledge of events depending on an act of free will;9 Various Questions (Quaestiones variae).

- Political and Polemical Writings.10 To Ockham’s Munich period belong the following principal political and polemical writings: The Work of Ninety Days (Opus nonaginta dierum): Allegedly written within ninety days (1333-1334) against Pope John XXII on the problem of Franciscan poverty; On the Dogmas of Pope John XXII (De dogmatibus papae Joannis XXII): polemical work against the Pope; Against John XXII (Contra Joannem XXII); Compendium of Errors of Pope John XXII (Compendium errorum papae Joannis XXII); Tractate showing that Pope Benedict XII and John XXII embraced heresies (Tractatus ostendens quod Benedictus papa XII nonnullas Joannis XXII haereses amplexus est et defendit); Allegations on Imperial Power (Allegationes de potestate imperiali); Eight Questions on Papal Power and Dignity (Octo quaestiones super potestate et dignitate papali); Whether the King of England can receive goods of the Church for the support of a war (An rex Angliae pro succursu guerrae possit recipere bona ecclesiarum); Dialogue (Dialogus): main work (1334-1338) on the relation between Church and State in the form of a dialogue, showing the pros and cons without revealing his own position (hence it must be used with caution); Tractate on the election of Charles IV (Tractatus de Electione Caroli IV); Breviloquium on the Power of the Pope (Breviloquium de potestate papae):11 on the spiritual and temporal power of the pope; Tractate on the Power of the Emperors and the Popes (Tractatus de imperatorum et pontificum potestate): on the Church at Avignon and the errors of John XXII.

Ockham’s viewpoint on universality as a construct of the mind also developed from the oft-repeated Aristotelian axiom that only individuals exist. Like Scotus, Ockham grounded scientific knowledge in the intuition of the individual thing which alone exists. "Knowledge of the singular sensible is absolutely first in this life, so that the same singular thing which is first perceived by the sense is the same object under the same aspect primarily understood intuitively by the intellect."12 With nothing in reality corresponding to universal concepts except individual things and qualities which are contingently related, universality can not be abstracted from reality but must be formally constructed by the mind. Ockham reaffirmed the uniqueness of the individual in the moral and political sphere. Each person possesses unique rights and freedom which are inviolable by any earthly power. In Ockham’s philosophy, the individual supercedes Aristotelian form, Thomistic existence, and Scotistic essence, as the ultimate reality.

Ockham’s insistence on individuals as the sole existents did not prevent him from recognizing science as a knowledge of universal propositions. On the contrary, he accepted the Aristotelian dictum that science is of universal terms, quantified universally for all the individuals signified by the term. With a high ideal of strictly scientific knowledge modeled after that developed by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics, Ockham defined science in the strict sense as "an evident cognition of some necessary truth caused by the evident cognition of necessary premises and a process of syllogistic reasoning."13 A proposition is scientifically known in this strict sense only when it remains true regardless of the existing world. All the truths of logic and mathematics, some statements about God (for example, God is good), and many metaphysical propositions, conform to the definition of scientific knowledge, for they are necessary conclusions obtained from evident premises which are necessary, that is, always true and never false.

Ockham also accepted the Aristotelian notion of indemonstrable principles to which the mind assents once it grasps the meaning of the terms. Mathematical propositions are analytically evident from the meaning of the terms; for example, a triangle is a figure bounded by three sides. A principle may be indemonstrable inasmuch as it is known through experience. "Certain first principles are not known through themselves (per se nota or analytic) but are known only through experience as in the case of the proposition `all heat is calefactive.’"14 The premises of the natural sciences are also verified by intuitive cognition.

Without a clear distinction between these two types of sciences, concepts or terms will be confused with things. It is important, for example, to keep in mind that Aristotle’s intention in the Categories was to treat of words and concepts and not of things, otherwise one will misinterpret his thought. Logic deals with terms of second intention, "fabrications" or constructions of the mind’s activity without which they cannot exist. Since terms of second intention presuppose terms of first intention, logic as a rational science presupposes real science. However, real science, such as physics and metaphysics, deals with first intention. "The first intention is an act of the understanding signifying things which are not signs. The second intention is the act of signifying first intentions."15 Ockham’s inclusion of both sign and thing in the definition of first intention enabled him to account for two Aristotelian doctrines: first, science is of the universal; and second, only individuals exist. By means of universal terms, real science concerns individual things. In the universal proposition "man is capable of laughter," the universal terms stand for individual things, and not for any extramental universal reality. The difference between real and rational science is this: "the real sciences are about mental contents — which stand for things. Logic, on the other hand, is about mental contents that stand for mental contents."16

Since a science is a collection of many truths or propositions, it is not limited to one subject. Scientific propositions may have different subjects. Some metaphysical propositions, for example, have being for their subject, whereas others have God as their subject. Both views can be justified. Among all the subjects of metaphysics God is the primary subject as far as primacy of perfection is concerned, but being is the primary subject as regards primacy of predication. Consequently, metaphysics does not have numerically one subject. As there is no king of the whole world, so nothing is the subject of the whole of metaphysics. Each part of metaphysics has its own subject, just as each kingdom has its own ruler.17

Neither is the unity of a science based on the unity of its object, for each science has many objects. The objects of both rational and real sciences are the propositions it contains. "Every science, whether it be real or rational, is concerned only with propositions, as with objects known, for only propositions are known."18 Ockham did not imply that science has no reference to reality. The terms of propositions of real science stand for individual things existing outside the mind, whereas terms of logical propositions stand for concepts in the mind. Terms and propositions substituting for realities are the proper objects of real sciences which treat of the real world only indirectly and improperly.

Working within the framework of faith and reason, Ockham correlatively developed his ideas in the real sciences of philosophy and (revealed) theology. Although its propositions can be true and certain, theology cannot be a strict science, since it rests upon faith and authority rather than upon evidence.19 In another sense, both philosophy and theology are sciences as ordered mental habits expressed by a systematic collection of propositions. While theology is methodologically distinct from philosophy and concerns some subjects unknown to the metaphysician and conducive to salvation, for example, the Trinity and Incarnation, they are ordered to each other as a whole, similar to men in the unity of an army or city, and can treat of the same truths.20

In his demand for rigorous scientific thinking, Ockham passionately practiced a simplicity of explanation. This principle of economy, sometimes called "Ockham’s Razor," is often stated by him in the form: "Plurality is not to be posited without necessity,"21 and sometimes: "What can be explained by the assumption of fewer things is vainly explained by the assumption of more things."22 The formulation, "Entities must not be multiplied without necessity," does not seem to have been used by Ockham. He used the principle of parsimony to eliminate pseudo-explanatory entities according to the criterion that "we must not affirm something is necessarily required for the explanation of an effect, if we are not led to this by a reason proceeding either from a truth known by itself or from an experience that is certain."23 For Ockham, the sufficient reason for the truth of a statement is either the observation of a fact, or immediate self-evidence, or divine revelation, or a deduction from these. In view of these criteria, he wielded his methodological razor in sharp critical analysis.

- Logicians: Aristotle and the Scholastics. To achieve a radical reconstruction of Augustinian thought, Ockham adapted Aristotelian logic as the tool of his critique. In this adaptation he relied on Peter of Spain’s (later Pope John XXI) Summulae logicales which opened Aristotelian logic to new considerations of terms, signs, and suppositions,24 and on William of Sherwood’s treatise on syncategorematic terms. The distinctive feature of Peter and William’s logic was its use of the supposition of terms in formulating the syntactical and semantical properties of cognitive language. Ockham, undoubtedly influenced by this logic of terms, considerably refined the technical equipment of his predecessors. "In his Summa Logicae Ockham systematized the contributions of his predecessors in a reformulation of the whole content of Aristotelian logic on semantical foundations of a purely extensional character."25

Ockham’s explanation followed the lead of Scotus in constructing a theory of knowledge on two basic modes of cognition: "The one may be called intuitive, the other abstractive cognition."26 The former mode belongs to the Augustinian tradition and the latter to the Aristotelian deposit of reason.

Human cognition starts with the immediate experience of singular facts, either sensible or intelligible objects, whether outside or within the mind. "And therefore, just as the knowledge of sensible facts that is obtained from experience . . . begins with the senses, . . . so in general the scientific knowledge of these purely intelligible facts of experience begins with an intellective intuition of these intelligible facts."27 Intuitive knowledge is the immediate apprehension of existing things without any concept as a medium between things and the act of apprehending.

Following the Augustinian tradition, Ockham recognized that man directly experiences his mental states of understanding and willing without any previous sense perception.28 Natural knowledge, therefore originates from two sources: intuition of external sensible objects and intuition of psychological activity. This intuition is the basis for a self-evident existential statement that the contingent thing which is experienced exists, is present, and has such and such a condition of inhering or not inhering (accident or substance), of nearness or distance, and other concrete features. Caused by an individual thing and by no other thing, an intuition contains its own guarantee.

Even if the existential judgment concerns an object of sense, it is based on an intellectual intuitive cognition of an object. Although the intellect cannot intuit a sensible object without the help of sensation — at least in the natural order — the primary intellectual awareness relates to the sense-object as immediately as sensory cognition. Thus Ockham continued the Augustinian doctrine of the certitude of judgments regarding immediately given facts by grounding them in the intuition of singular things. "Intuitive cognition of a thing is cognition that enables us to know whether the thing exists or does not exist, in such a way that, if the thing exists, then the intellect immediately judges that it exists and evidently knows that it exists."29 The guarantee of such concrete judgments is the evidence presented by intuition.

- Intuition of Nonexistents. While it is evident that there cannot be intuition without a knowing subject, it is not at all clear whether intuitive cognition can take place without the existing object itself or its causality. With only the intellect present, it seems impossible to have intuition. However, as a Christian, Ockham believed in God’s omnipotence which as first cause can produce everything that a secondary cause can effect. "Intuitive cognition of a non-existent object is possible by divine power."30

In stating that intuition can know an object which does not exist, Ockham has in mind an object which, though not existing in fact, can exist. But is it not a contradiction to speak of an intuition of something which does not exist? As a Christian theologian, Ockham believed that God has immediate cognition of everything, not only all that exists, but also all that could exist, but does not. If such knowledge is possible to God, it cannot involve a contradiction. An object which "does not contain a manifest contradiction"31 and hence is not pure nothingness, is a possible existent which can be intuited by the human intellect with the help of God.

Ockham excludes a contradiction not only from the object in itself but also from the very act of intuiting. "God cannot cause in us such knowledge through which there evidently appears to be a thing present to us when it is absent, because this includes a contradiction."32 God cannot cause a contradictory situation of evident knowledge that a thing is present when it is absent. Something cannot be both present and absent in the evident knowledge of intuition.

How can an intuited individual thing give rise to universal knowledge? To answer this question, Ockham analyzed the Aristotelian theory of abstraction. The mind also "abstracts from existence and nonexistence"33 to focus solely on the object itself. Since this knowledge does not imply the actual existence of the object here and now, it cannot be grounds for asserting the existential judgment, "This thing exists." Without a preceding intuition, abstractive cognition by itself does not suffice to make evident an existential judgment concerning contingent things. Although abstractive cognition prescinds from the object’s actuality or nonactuality, it is not universal knowledge. Since intuitive and abstractive cognition result from the causal cooperation of intellect and object, both represent real objects outside or inside the mind. Ockham, therefore, is a realist in his theory of knowledge.

- Universal concept. Intuition combines with abstraction to effect a concept. The crucial question for Ockham is how the concept becomes universal. The abstractive cognition is stored in the memory as habitual knowledge and generalized as a universal concept by way of comparison with other similar abstractive cognitions to represent, not just one, but many similar individuals. Thus, the universal "is a sign naturally predicable of many things, . . ."34 Nothing in the real world corresponds to the universality of a concept; "A universal is nothing other than a content of the mind; and therefore no substance outside the mind and no accident outside the mind is such a universal."35

With no universals in reality, what guarantee does the intellect have that its universal concepts provide objective knowledge of reality as it is with individual natures? Because of its origin in abstraction from intuited individual things, and because of the similarity between the individuals, the concept is common to all individuals of the same kind and hence predicable of them.36 Individuals, for example, Plato and Socrates, are similar not in the sense of sharing in a common reality, but in the sense that they agree with each other in the likeness of their individual natures. On this basis, universal concepts are said to represent individual realities. Whereas universality exists wholly within the mind as a sufficiently generalized abstractive cognition, only individuality and the similarity of singular natures exist outside the mind as the objective basis of universal concepts.

Ockham was not as sure about the nature of a universal concept in the mind. At first he considered the universal concept (for example, "man" or "animal" in the proposition "man is an animal") as something differing from the act of thinking of which it is an object with no psychical or physical reality other than that of thought-object in the mind."37 because the concept is merely mentally imaged, Ockham called it a "fictum" in the sense, not of a pure fiction, but of a logical "picture" constructed from the interaction of the object and cognition and hence truly representing the object. Peter Aureoli, Ockham’s contemporary, also held the "fictum" theory.

However, it appears that Ockham eventually gave up the "fictum" theory for what may be called the "intellection" theory, "according to which a concept is the same as the act of knowing."38 According to this view, the universal concept is a psychical entity which is identical with the very act of intellection. Since there are no universals to be drawn from individual sensible things, Ockham applied his principle of economy to get rid of the apparatus of abstracting intelligible likenesses (species intelligibiles). Immediately caused by the object and the intellect working together as two part-causes, the concept represents the object, and consequently can function as a predicate in a mental proposition.

Having investigated the mind’s universal concepts as the material needed for the various sciences. Ockham inquired into the logical arrangement of these notions to obtain truth and to organize them into a body. Since logic teaches one how to order concepts in the right way, it is a practical science, it is a tool of scientific work. Following Aristotle’s Organon, he divided the field of formal logic into the three classical parts: terms, propositions and reasoning.39 Ockham’s logic, like all medieval logic, treats mainly of spoken sentences which he distinguished from mental and written sentences.

The elements of propositions are terms. "A term is simply one of the parts into which a proposition is directly divided."40 It signifies an object to the mind. Nouns, for instance, are instituted by man to represent objects and to substitute as names for things in discourse. Language, for Ockham, is a system of conventional signs which depend on concepts. Since concepts are produced, not by the activity of artificiality instituting languages, but by the natural interaction of object and intellect, they are said to be natural signs to which the forms correspond. Words for an individual thing vary in different languages, for example, "man" in English and "homme" in French, but the concept or logical significance of the term is the same. However, both word and concept, properly speaking, directly signify tho same object.41

- Division of Terms. Categorematic and Syncategorematic. In his analysis of propositions, Ockham distinguished formal and material elements. In the proposition "every man is not white," the material elements, "man" and "white," are categeorematic terms, and the formal characteristics, "every," "is," and "not," are syncategorermatic terms (called "constants" by modern logicians). Whereas, the former terms naturally or conventionally signify definite objects, the latter have meaning only within the context of categorematic terms.42 The main subject of logic is syncategorematic terms which make inferences possible.

- Absolute and Connotative Terms. Categorematic terms are basically distinguished into absolute and connotative terms. Absolute terms, such as "man," "horse," and "intellection" directly signify an object. "A connotative name, however, . . . signifies something primarily and something else secondarily."43 A connotative term not only directly signifies an object, but indirectly stands for something else. For example, in the proposition "This table is quantitative," the term "quantitative" which immediately signifies "table" connotes or indicates that such a body has parts distinct from each other. Whereas absolute terms result from abstraction based on intuition and are susceptible of a real definition in answer to the question "What is this thing?", connotative terms are the outcome of a combination of concepts and are nominally definable in response to the question, "What is meant by this term?"

- First and Second Impositions. Ockham further analyzed terms into first and second imposition. The act of imposing a name on an object can take place on the first level of using terms, or on the second level of speaking about terms and signifying "only a conventional sign."44 As regards the spoken or written language, words of first imposition, as "man," "intention," and "universal," are assigned the task of signifying; and words of second imposition, as "substantive," "adjective," and "conjugation," refer to qualifications of language. The latter words, which always signify the former, are the main interest of the grammarian.

- First and Second Intentions. The distinction between first and second intentions concerns concepts. Concepts of first intentions such as "man" and "white" signify objects that are not signs;45 corresponding to this first level are words of first imposition. Concepts of second intentions such as "universal" and "species" are signs predicated of first intentions, as when it is said "man" and "horse" are species; correlative to this level are words of second imposition. In Ockham’s view, the projection of universals into reality arose from the logical mistake of construing terms of second intention as term of first intention and supposing, for example, that what is signified by the term "man" is some reality in individuals.

Ockham refined and simplified the theory of supposition introduced by earlier logicians. Supposition "is a property belonging to a term, but only when used in a proposition."46

- Personal, Simple, Material. In the statement "the man is running," the term "man" stands for a definite individual. This is an instance of personal supposition "when a term stands for what it signifies and is used in its significative function."47 However, in the case of simple supposition the term itself becomes a subject of discourse and does not exercise a significative function. For instance, in the statement "man is a species," the concept "man" represents, not a man in reality, but simply the concept itself. Rejecting the earlier terminist logicians who had construed a simple supposition as tho use of a term for the universal supposed to exist in individuals, Ockham regarded simple supposition as the use of a term for the concept expressed by it. If the term as the subject of discourse is a word in "material" supposition, for example, in the sentence "`man’ has three letters," the sense is that the term "man," not as species or rational animal, but as word has three letters.

- Determinate and Common Supposition. Ockham developed a logic of predication by distinguishing a personal supposition into determinate and common. The inference from an affirmative proposition such as "some man is white" to its singularized form "This man is white," (and so on for other individuals signified by the subjects) is valid. "There is determinate supposition when it is possible to make the logical descent to singulars by a disjunctive proposition."48 In a common, distributive, confused supposition, the logical descent from a universal proposition to singularized propositions is joined by the conjunction "and," as in this instance, "Every man is mortal; therefore this man is mortal and that man is mortal" (and so on for every individual man). The inference from a singular proposition to a more general statement is a process of ascent.49

- Logical Truth. Ockham utilized his theory of supposition to clarify Aristotle’s view that a proposition is true when that which is said to be is. The term "truth" and "falsity" are second intentions predicable of propositions which they signify and for which they can stand. Ockham restates Aristotle with greater precision when he says that for a proposition to be true "it is sufficient and necessary that subject and predicate should stand for (have supposition for) the same thing."50 For example, the statement "Socrates is white" is true if there really is one individual signified by the terms "Socrates" and "white" even though the terms themselves and the notions associated with them are not identical. The terms "true" and "false" are connotative terms that directly signify propositions and connote that subject and predicate stand for the same state of affairs.51

With other medieval logicians, Ockham viewed the syllogism as a special type of inference within the general theory of consequences (consequentiae) which can be understood as conditional propositions expressed in the general form: If A is, then B is. Its antecedent and the consequent may be either simple or compound propositions. In his analysis of conditional propositions, Ockham formulated many rules of inference which are well-known theorems of propositional calculus in modern logic. For example, "From truth falsity never follows";52 when the antecedent is true and the consequent is false, the inference is not valid.

Metaphysics53

Ockham followed Aristotle in describing metaphysics as a real science whose "subject is being . . . , not nevertheless in word but in concept."54 It deals with the concept of being in general, which is formed after the intuition of existing things. In the first sense, "the noun `being’ is associated with a concept which is common to all things and can be predicated of all things."55 Being as such, the most common concept predicable about things, "stands only for a concept in the mind, not for substance nor accident,"56 nor a common nature in things. There is no "being as such" in the extramental world; there are only beings.

As "the adequate object of our intellect," being is most common, and univocal to everything per se intelligible."57 For that reason, being is a natural object of the human intellect inasmuch as this "power is naturally inclined towards it"58 without attaining every element of the object’s content. Through intuition of singular existents, the intellect first abstracts "the concept of being"59 and in a progressive process of generalizing abstraction forms the universal concept of being as such.

- Substance. Ockham conceived Aristotle’s primary substance as the individual subject. However, "no external corporeal substance can be naturally apprehended in itself, by us, however it may be with respect to the intellect itself or any substance which is of the essence of the knower."60 For example, from the observation of fire, we know that it is fire; yet, in reality, we do not know fire in itself but only the accidents of fire. Known only as the substratum of sensible qualities, corporeal "substance is therefore understood in connotative and negative concepts, such as `being which subsists by itself,’ `being, which is not in something else,’ `being which is a subject of all accidents.’"61

- Essence and Existence. Since the term ‘being’ denotes everything that exists or can exist in the universe, it necessarily refers by its very meaning to actual existence. In view of this notion of being, Ockham found it as meaningless as Scotus to distinguish between essence and existence in a real thing: "Existence is not a thing different from the essence of a thing."62 While differing grammatically, both terms signify exactly the same individual reality. As means "essence" and "existence" signify the same individual grammatically and logically. "The words ‘thing’ and ‘to be’ (esse) signify one and the same thing, but the one in the manner of a noun and the other in the manner of a verb."63

Ockham understood Boethius’ famous distinction between what a thing is (quod est) and that by which a thing is (quo est) as a real distinction in a creature: "that which a creature is and that in virtue of which a creature is are simply distinct, just as God and a creature are distinct."64 A creature, as that which is, really differs from God by which he is, whereas there is nothing different from God in virtue of which God is.

- Act and Potency. Such is the case also with the supposed distinction in things between potential and actual being. To say that something exists potentially does not mean that "something which is not in the universe, but can exist in the universe, is truly a being."65 This involves a distinction between two kinds of statements, assertoric and de possibili, and not between things denoted by the terms of statements. In Ockham’s view, most of the traditional metaphysical doctrines represent confusions of logical and physical concepts, or of ways of signifying things and the things signified.

Ockham agreed with Scotus that the general concept of being is univocal. Since every individual is conceived as a being, the concept of being can be univocally predicated of everything that exists or can exist. Unable to intuit God or to have a simple proper concept of him, the human mind needs to abstract from immediately known creatures to acquire a common concept predicable of him and other beings. For instance, the notions "being" and "first" abstracted from intuited things can be combined to form the composite proper concept "first being."66 The elements of such a concept are predicable in exactly the same sense of God and creatures, linking experience to the unintuited Divinity. If the term "being" were not univocal, such that one and the same meaning did not correspond to that term, there would be no link joining the experience of creatures to the unexperienced God; the outcome could be agnosticism in regard to God.

Ockham distinguished three kinds of univocity. First, a univocal concept may be common to a number of things which are perfectly alike, for example, the concept of man common to individual men. Second, a univocal concept may be common to a number of things which are alike in one way and unlike in another. For instance, man and donkey are alike in being animals and having similar matter, though their specific forms differ. Third, the term "univocal" denotes a concept common to many things which have no likeness, either substantial or accidental."67 It is in this sense that a concept common to God and creatures is univocal, since they are completely dissimilar in reality. What is common to God and creatures in the conceptual order radically differs in the real order. The univocity of the term "being" and of others used in metaphysics, imply no real similarity between God and creatures: ". . . in God and in creatures there is nothing at all intrinsic or extrinsic, which is of the same kind."68 As a melody can be the same though each note is different when played in a different key, the one concept of being can be univocally applied to completely dissimilar beings, as infinite being and finite being. The term "being" (also the term "substance") is predicated of every individual, not simply as qualifying some other thing, for example, as the term "white" is applied in the manner of a quality (in quale) to a subject, but in its own right as a "quiddity" (in quid). This theory of univocity enabled Ockham to lay the foundation of a natural theology without falling into pantheism or agnosticism.

Ockham saw no need of analogy to avoid pantheism and agnosticism. If analogy is understood in the third sense mentioned above, then the univocal concept of being may be called "analogous." However, recourse to the theory of analogy to avoid pantheism is unnecessary, since being as such which is common to God and creatures is not a real thing in which both participate but rather a concept. From the viewpoint of reality, God and creatures are radically different beings, and the concepts corresponding to these individuals also have different significations. In this case, since the concept of God is not the same as the concept of creature, the term "being" should be predicated, not univocally, but equivocally, of them. This would lead to agnosticism. For Ockham, predication is either univocal or equivocal. There is no room for analogy.69

Ockham retained the fourfold Aristotelian division into formal, material, final and efficient causes, and reduced the exemplar to cause in a metaphorical sense.70 In general cause is a positive entity distinct from what is caused by it. Efficient cause is that which, having been posited, the effect follows and, having been removed (all other circumstances remaining the same). the effect does not follow. "An efficient cause," Ockham wrote, "is defined as that whose existence or presence is followed by something."71 This definition shows an empirical tendency on the part of Ockham to interpret causal relation as regular sequence.

In the experiential verification of a causal relation it must be shown that when one definite thing is present another thing follows, or when the former is absent the latter does not follow. For example, "it is proved that fire is the cause of heat, since when fire is there and all other things (all other possible causal factors) have been removed, heat follows in a heatable object which has been brought near the fire."72

In the case of two really distinct things, for example, fire and burning, Ockham held that God could cause one without the other. "Although burning always follows the contact of fire with an inflammable object, this does not exclude the possibility that its cause is not the fire. It may be that God has so ordained things that whenever fire is compresent with the object, he himself is the cause of the burning."73 Since God can supply for the causality of any secondary cause, one cannot strictly prove that a given effect is caused by a secondary cause and not by God alone.74 However, Ockham did not deny the validity of causal argumentation. On the contrary, he used causal arguments to reason from the characteristics of a given effect to a cause. Since God created things in such a way that a certain order results, one can empirically study that invariable succession and predict that the causal relations experienced in the past will be experienced in the future, even though God’s absolute power could intervene in the world.

In the tradition of medieval thought, Ockham affirmed that the human intellect cannot naturally intuit, and consequently cannot abstractively know God as he is in himself.75 The primary object of the human mind is the nature of material things. Since human understanding does not have the divine essence as its immediate object, it "cannot know God in this life in a concept that is simple and proper to Him,"75 just as a man born blind cannot have a proper concept of color. Hence, the proposition, "God exists" is not self-evident to man in this life. This being so, is it possible to have certain natural knowledge of God from creatures?

However, God "can be conceived by us in some common concept predicable of him and others."77 For example, from the experience of other things, the intellect is able "to abstract the concept of wisdom from created wisdom" and "imperfection from the wisdom of the creature,"78 to form a complex concept of wisdom which is common to God and creatures. These connotative terms principally and quidditatively signify God and secondarily refer to the different created perfections.

The distinct composite concepts which man has of God, a single being, indicate that he immediately knows, not the divine essence, but rather concepts of God, mental representations of the Divine. None of these mental constructs is a simple proper concept adequately mirroring the divine essence. The human mind can attain a nominal representation (quid nominis) but not the reality (quid rei) of God. Although the human mind "cannot know in themselves either the unity of God . . . or his infinite power or the divine goodness or perfection," its propositions signifying these attributes, nonetheless, have meaning. Thus theology is a real science of "concepts which . . . we use in propositions to stand for God,"79 and theological propositions are objective in the sense of referring to the divine reality.

- Argument from production. For Ockham, tho proposition that God exists can be strictly demonstrated. He criticized Duns Scotus’ form of the proof from efficient causality as not sufficiently conclusive.80 In the case of accidentally ordered causes, for example, a series of men, each of whom successively begets a son, it is difficult, if not impossible, to prove that there cannot be an infinite regress in causes of the same kind with one able to exist without the other. Furthermore, one is not logically bound to postulate coexistence in time of all causes essentially belonging to the same series: "not everything which mediately or immediately produces a thing coexists with the thing produced. Therefore, in the order of productive beings we could go on ad infinitum,"81 without conclusively affirming a first efficient cause.

- Proof from Conservation. By shifting his perspective from origination to conservation, Ockham found that the difficulty of infinite regress could be overcome and Scotus’ argument from essentially ordered causes be made more cogent. In a series of conserving causes, wherein one thing keeps another in existence, and the former itself is being maintained by something else, and so on, it follows ex hypothesi that the whole series must be simultaneously existing. Since it is "reasonable enough" to suppose that an infinite number of contemporaneous conserving causes is impossible, there must be a primary conserver of the world here and now.82 Ockham’s criticism of Scotus, therefore, is directed more against the actual form than against the main principle of his proof.

- Reasoning from Finality. Ockham rejected as insufficient Scotus’ proof of God’s existence from final causality. The fact that natural agents act uniformly does not warrant any valid conclusion other than that they move by natural necessity. It is meaningless to say they move for an end, unless one presupposes the existence of God who created their natures and thereby determined inanimate things to act as they do. But this reasoning assumes precisely what needs to be proved.83 As to intelligent agents, it is evident that their own wills move them, but it cannot be shown that all wills are moved by the perfect good, God.84 With no adequate evidence of an immanent teleological order in the universe, Ockham believed he could not convincingly infer the existence of God as its final cause.

- One. Like Moses Maimonides, Ockham denied that one can strictly demonstrate that there is one God. Although the proof of God’s existence discloses that he is "that than which nothing is more noble and more perfect,"85 it does not strictly imply that God excels anything equal to him. Since other worlds besides our own are possible, it is consequently conceivable that there are other primary conserving causes. Then it is a question of proving that one conserver is the cause of all others. With no demonstrative argument for God’s unicity, Ockham turned to persuasive reasoning that seems to be adopted from Duns Scotus. If two gods of equal perfection were possible, then why cannot three, or even an infinity of such gods exist. But since what is possible is also necessary to God, an infinity of gods must exist. An infinity of separate beings, however, is a contradiction and hence inadmissible. By implication, it follows therefore that not more than one God can and does exist.

- Infinity and Omnipotence. Having rejected the strict demonstration of an absolutely primary cause, Ockham logically denied strict proof of an infinite and omnipotent being as creator of all things. Since "every effect producible by God is finite," and "effects together are finite also," then "by their efficiency the infinity of God cannot be proved."86 Since there is a proportion between cause and effect, finite effects would seem to require merely finite causes.

If human reason cannot demonstrate the impossibility of a being equal to God, then by implication it cannot prove that the primary conserver is all-powerful and not limited. Any attempt to demonstrate such attributes in a syllogism assumes that the notions "infinite" and "omnipotent" can be used as middle terms predicable of the concept of God as the absolutely supreme being. Such a fallacy begs the question by assuming there is such a being to which infinity must be attributed.87 Human reason, at most, can give only probable or persuasive arguments for the infinity and omnipotence of God.

Nonetheless, Ockham developed his whole philosophy in view of the divine omnipotence which he professed within the framework of faith. "That God is the mediate or immediate cause of all things . . . cannot be demonstrated, yet I argue persuasively for it on the basis of authority and reason."88 On the premise that God who is infinite will and infinite power, can do anything that does not involve a contradiction (which is none other than absolute nonentity),89 anything that is possible, Ockham inferred that whatever God produces by means of secondary created causes, he can produce and conserve immediately without their aid. For example, God can produce and conserve an accident without its substance, matter without form, and vice versa.90

- Omniscience. Human reason cannot strictly prove that God knows other things beside himself. Demonstration would have to rest mainly on God’s universal causality. But it can neither be proven by means of the principle of causality that a cause knows its immediate effect, nor demonstrated that God is the immediate cause of all things. Probable arguments for God’s knowing some things other than himself are inconclusive. However, it cannot be demonstrated that God knows nothing other than himself, because it cannot be proved that every act of cognition depends on its object.91 Ockham, nevertheless, affirmed the omniscience of God as an article of faith.

Infinite in knowledge and power, God has no need of intermediary ideas in knowing and creating other beings.92 Just because man uses ideas or concepts to signify something about God does not justify his projecting ideas into the Godhead. This is a confusion of the linguistic or conceptual and real orders, with words and concepts being taken for realities. In Ockham’s opinion, the theory of ideas in God is simply an anthropomorphic invention. However, perhaps out of respect for the traditional Augustinian acceptance of the theory of ideas, Ockham was not prepared to abandon the theory altogether.

The connotative term "idea" "can be predicated of the creature itself, but not directly of the divine "knowing agent nor of the knowledge, since neither the knowledge nor the knower is an idea or pattern."93 It connotes indirectly the divine knowledge or knower. The ideas are not subjective realities in God. "The ideas are in Him only objectively, that is, as certain things which are known by him, for the ideas are things themselves which are producible by God."94 Creatures as known by God are really the ideas. The patterns or exemplars in view of which God knows and creates actual existents are nothing more than the creature as known from eternity by God.

Since individual things alone are producible outside (the mind) and no others,"95 it follows that there are divine ideas of individuals but not of universal genera and species nor of negations, privations, evil, and guilt, which cannot be actually distinct existents. What is the sense of postulating ideas of universals in God when there is no reality corresponding to them? According to Ockham‘s principle of parsimony, there is no reason for postulating ideas in God which are distinct from creatures themselves, whether the ideas are understood as real or mental relations. Absolutely independent, God bears no real relation to creatures. If the idea were a mental relation, it could not be the exemplar of the creature, just as a purely mental construct or being of reason (eus rationis) such as genus or species cannot be the exemplar of a real being.

Inasmuch as God can produce an infinity of creatures, the number of ideas must be unlimited. Aquinas and Scotus spoke as though the distinction of ideas in God were prior to the production of creatures. Before creation, the ideas have no positive reality but are simply "nonbeings" in the divine mind.96 This negative status of the divine ideas respects God’s absolute simplicity and at the same time guarantees his knowledge of things other than himself.

- Divine Liberty. God’s liberty, though not strictly demonstrable, can be affirmed with persuasive reason. The fact of contingency in the world presupposes that God is a free cause which cannot be hindered and equally regards an infinite number of things in the same way.97 "But because of the limitlessness of volition (the divine will) is free as regards opposite objects."98 Since the divine will "intends the object contingently in such a way that at the same instant it could intend the opposite object,"99 it can produce one effect and not the other.

- Knowledge of Future Contingents. Human reason cannot strictly demonstrate that God knows events depending on free wills for their actuality. Since "a future contingent fact simply depends on a free power and hence is not true in itself,"100 what will happen or what will not happen cannot be known as true. Neither statement taken by itself, namely, "This will happen," or "this will not happen" can be known to be true. One can simply state as true the disjunctive proposition, "Either this will happen or this will not happen."

Motivated by faith, however, Ockham held "without any doubt that God knows all future contingent facts evidently and with certainty. The manner in which he knows them, I, however, do not know."101 Ockham reasoned that as the human intellect can know contingent propositions from an intuition of their terms given in experience (for example, "the sun is shining."), "so the divine essence itself is an intuitive cognition by which are known not only necessary truth and contingent truth about a present fact, but also which side of a contradiction will be true and which will be false."102 For example, God knows not only whether I shall choose to walk or not to walk tomorrow, he also knows which alternative is true and which false. Implied in Ockham’s position, in opposition to Aristotle, is his rejection of any propositions that are neither true nor false. This shows that Ockham did not admit an exception to the principle of excluded middle. Appealing to faith, Ockham noted that God could reveal affirmative propositions about future contingent events to the prophets, because he knew the truth of such propositions.

- Distinction of Attributes. The divine attributes, as terms, differ from each other as distinct concepts or words, but as regards the reality signified by these terms they are in every sense identical with each other and with God’s absolutely simple essence.103 "In God there is no distinction between essence and will, nor between intellect and will."104 While agreeing with Aquinas that the divine attributes differ by a distinction of reason,105 Ockham rejected Aquinas and Scotus’ views of a foundation in the divine being for the distinction of man’s concepts of God, and affirmed that concepts such as wisdom and goodness, which stand for the one, simple, divine reality, have exactly the same meaning in God. They differ in meaning only insofar as they connote created wisdom and goodness which are really distinct qualities in creatures.106

The real science of nature treats of concepts which signify changeable things. It "is about mental contents which are common" to movable and corruptible things and "which stand precisely for such things in many propositions."107 It inductively starts from the more known, and through observation, experience and reasoning ascends from effects to causes. The passage from singular to universal propositions affirmed for all possible cases is justified by the analytically evident principle that all individuals of specifically similar nature (eiusdem rationis) act or react in a similar manner to similar conditions. Since God can produce an effect without its natural cause, the application of this rule is valid only within the general hypothesis of the common course of nature.

Ockham viewed the world against the background of divine omnipotence and freedom. The world is ordered in the sense that certain evils are readied by particular means. To explain this order, Scotus distinguished between God’s choice of the end and then his choice of the means. Ockham, however, objected to any anthropomorphic projection of human ways of acting into the Divine. "It does not seem to be well said that God wills the end before that which is (ordered) to the end, because there is not (in God) such a priority of acts."108

In addition, such language of priority and posteriority seems to impair the utter contingency of the world-order. The choice of both end and means is completely contingent. In view of the divine omnipotence and infinite freedom, Ockham conceived all changeable things as radically contingent in their created structure; to be a creature means to depend entirely on God’s free will. Whatever stability the world-order possesses is completely dependent on God’s free decision.109 Infinitely wise and good, God’s freedom is not arbitrary; his freedom is wise and good, and his wisdom and goodness are unconditionally free. Bound only by what is a contradiction, which in reality means nonbeing, his power and freedom are encompassed by nothing real; they are really boundless.

- Substance and Quality. In accord with the principle of economy, Ockham reduced the Aristotelian categories to substance and quality, as "white," and "hot." Whereas these two categories are absolute terms signifying distinct entities, the other categories are connotative terms denoting either a substance or a quality and stand for something else. Thus the latter categories are in no way different from the individual contingent bodies they modify. Since "quantity signifies substance, connoting that it has part distant from part,"110 it is "the very substance of a thing."111 Likewise, motion, place, and time are in no way different from the bodies concerned.112

Ockham did not identify a relation with its foundation. "But I say that a relation is not the foundation but only an ‘intention’ or concept in the soul, signifying several absolute things."113 A relation is a name or concept denoting the comparison of substances or qualities with each other. This means that outside the mind, the order of the universe, for example, has no reality distinct from the existing parts of the universe.

In this case, the relation of dependence, is analyzable in reality, into two existents, creatures and God, and simply means that the latter individuals cannot exist without the former who produces and conserves them. Ockham is willing to speak of a real relation of creatures to God but only in the sense that what is produced and conserved, and what produces and conserves, actually exists, without any third entity being added to the creature.114

To be moved locally "is first to have one place, and afterwards, without any other thing being postulated, to have another place . . . And consequently the whole nature of motion can be saved by this without anything else but the fact that a body is successively in distinct places and is not at rest in any of them."115 It suffices to postulate a body and its place to explain local motion.

- Place and Time. Ockham’s razor also shaved down the Aristotelian categories of place and time. The statement that a body is in a place can mislead one into thinking that, because the words "body" and "place" are distinct terms, the realities signified by the names are really distinct. On the contrary, place is identical with the surface or surfaces of a body or bodies. Time is not a thing distinct from a moving body. "Primarily and principally ‘time’ signifies the same as ‘motion,’ although it connotes . . . an act of the soul, by which it (the soul or mind) knows the before and after of that motion."116 Time denotes no distinct thing outside the soul beyond what motion signifies. For Ockham, time and motion are simply distinguished as terms by the mind.

Ockham allowed no other absolute entity to creep into his simplified world unless it was necessary for a full explanation of the facts. For example, he rejected both the theory of impetus according to which the stone receives the quality of impetus, and the old theory according to which the projected object is kept in motion by the surrounding air. It is sufficient to assume that the movement imparted by the hand to the stone is identical with the moving body and remains until it is impeded. "Such motion as occurs through the separation of movable object from its first projecting body, the moving agent is the very thing that is moved . . . , so that this mover and the thing it moves are absolutely indistinguishable."117

Ockham accepted the world-system commonly held by thinkers in the Middle Ages. With Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, he believed that the beginning of the finite world in time cannot be demonstrated: "God could have made the world from eternity, since no contradiction seems to follow from this."118 As God is absolutely powerful and free to create the world from eternity, so "God could make a better world" than the present one.119 Everything was made for man who was created for God. At the center of the universe is the earth, surrounded by the spheres of the planets and stars. All creatures are divided into two groups, the spiritual and the material.

Ockham adopted Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory with the exception of the notion of privation which he eliminated as superfluous. Matter and forms are "the only two principles of any generation."120 Primary matter is not pure potentiality but a positive entity which is the same in all composite physical bodies, heavenly as well as terrestrial.121 "Matter is really actual by itself and it can by no means be reduced to a mere potentiality," although it is "always in potentiality with reference to the form which it lacks."122 Since the individual is nothing other than the form of the whole (forma totius), the union of matter and form, no principle of individuation is required apart from its efficient cause.

In view of his demands for strict demonstration, Ockham criticized the inadequacy of a number of psychological proofs advanced by his predecessors. Natural reason would undoubtedly suppose that one’s acts of understanding and willing, which are intuitively cognized, are acts of his substantial form. However, since they are experienced as acts of the form of the body, there is no compelling reason for assuming that form to be incorruptible and separable from the body rather than an extended and corruptible form. If, however, intellective soul is understood as an immaterial and incorruptible form, "it cannot be evidently known by reason or experience that such a (immaterial and incorruptible) form exists in us."123 Nor can it be strictly proved that the acts of understanding one experiences are "proper to such a substance . . . in us."124 Even if one could demonstrate that these experienced acts of understanding belong to an immaterial substance, it would not follow "that such a soul is a form of the body . . . These three things are only matters of belief."125

- Plurality of Forms. While accepting on faith the existence of an incorruptible form in a human being, Ockham hesitated to say that this form directly determines matter. The corruptibility of the human body presupposes "another form in addition to the intellectual soul, namely a sensitive form, in which a natural agent can act by way of corruption and production."126 The matter of the human body supports the sensitive form which determines it (the matter). The sensitive form is extended in such a way that its various parts perfect the different sensory organs, such as sight and hearing.

In brutes and men, the sensitive soul is distinct from the form of corporeity which explains the numerical identity of a dead body with the individual’s formerly living body. Within a theological context, the form of corporeity accounts for the numerical identify of Christ’s dead body with his living body. The intellectual, sensitive, and corporeal forms are united in the individual: "There is only one total being of man, but several partial beings."127 Thus Ockham rejected Aquinas’ theory of one form in favor of the Augustinian tradition of a plurality of forms.

The plurality of forms does not imply that the rational soul is really (Thomas Aquinas) or formally (Duns Scotus) distinct from its faculties. Unextended and spiritual, the rational soul cannot have parts or distinct faculties. Intellect and will appear as really distinct when they are taken as connotative terms which signify the different acts of understanding and willing. However, from the viewpoint of the one rational soul producing the acts of understanding and willing, intellect and will are really identical as partial causes in their one eliciting principle; they are nothing but the "one substance of the soul."128

Similarly, the sensitive powers, though distinct accidental dispositions in the various sense-organs, are identical in the sensitive form as the one source effecting the various acts of sensation.129 The activities of this one simple soul can be stabilized by habits which as additional forms are accidental and really distinct from the soul.130

- Intellect. In accord with his principle of parsimony, Ockham saw no need of sensible and intelligible likeness to explain knowledge which involves simply an act of knowing and individual realities.131 Chimera and nonbeing are nothing but the mind’s act of knowing to which nothing corresponds in reality.132 If intelligible likenesses were first known, knowledge would stop at them and one would never know whether they resemble reality.133

There is no compelling reason for distinguishing the active intellect from the passive intellect. "The agent and possible intellects are completely the same in reality and in principle. Nevertheless, these names or concepts connote different aspects,"134 the former connoting the soul as actively producing knowledge and the latter designating the same soul as passively receiving knowledge. With no essence to be abstracted from individual things, abstraction is simply an activity in which the intellect on experiencing one or more things elicits an indistinct act of knowing and produces a universal concept.135

- Will. Ockham followed the Franciscan tradition of Bonaventure and Scotus in upholding the priority of the will over the intellect. "With reference to what their names signify, the will may be called superior to the intellect, because the act of loving, designated by the word ‘will,’ is superior to the act of understanding, designated by the word ‘intellect.’"136 What necessarily moves the intellect in the act of understanding is freely chosen or rejected by the will. In the ultimate analysis, "a true rather than a false proposition is formed, an affirmative rather than a negative, . . . because the will wants to form the one and not the other."137 The intensity of conatus and the attention in cognition depend on the act of the will.

- Freedom. Freedom is one of the chief characteristics of a rational being. Intuition, not a priori reasoning, reveals that man is the cause of free acts: "It can, however, be known evidently through experience, that is, through the fact that every man experiences that however much his reason dictates something, his will can will or not will it."138 Freedom is "the power whereby I am able indifferently and contingently to posit an effect, so that I am able to cause and not to cause the same effect without any change being made in this power."139 Furthermore, blame and praise attributed to responsible persons indicates the reality of their freedom. In complete possession of itself, the will enjoys self-determination, the power to act or not to act even if all the necessary requirements to an act are given. "The will is properly a rational power,"140 which has a capacity for "contrary effects, because it can cause the love of something or hate."141

Ockham found it difficult to explain how repeated acts of the sensitive appetite can result in the formation of habits in a free power like the will. Experience shows that the will is more inclined not to choose an object causing pain in the sensitive appetite, even though the intellect present it with the option of not choosing the object. On the other hand, pleasure in the sensitive appetite is not the cause of the inclination of the will which is free to choose the opposite. No matter how much the will is inclined towards a habit formed by the sensitive appetite’s indulgence in a certain direction, the will, even though with difficulty, remains free to act against that habit.142

Liberty of the will is the basis of moral goodness, and responsibility. The seat of morality is in the will, "because every act other than the act of will, which is in the power of the will, is only good in such manner that it can be a bad act, because it can be done for an evil end and from an evil intention."143 Since every action, other than the act of willing itself, can be performed by reason of natural causes and not freely, it could be caused in man by God alone instead of by his will, and consequently, in itself be neither virtuous nor vicious, except by denomination from the act of the will.144

The will, according to Ockham, does not necessarily seek happiness, the last end. "The will contingently and freely . . . enjoys the ultimate end shown in a universal," or particular way, "because it is able to love and not love happiness."145 However, since natural reason does not know that the enjoyment of God as the last end is possible and since there "is not in our will an inclination intensively to the infinite good,"146 man does not necessarily will the enjoyment of God.147 Even if faith testifies to its possibility, man can still will or not will to enjoy God, as experience reveals. Vis-à-vis the intellect’s judgment, the will remains free. It does not necessarily desire even perfect happiness in general. Though "the will does not necessarily conform to the judgment of reason, it can conform with the judgment of reason, whether that judgment be right or erroneous";148 for example, if the intellect judges that perfect happiness is impossible and incompatible with human existence, the will can consent to that judgment.

The plurality of forms and faculties is unified in the human person which as "an intellectual and complete nature is neither supported by anything else nor is able, as part, to form with another thing one being."149 The individual subject or suppositum is "a complete being, incommunicable by identity, incapable of inhering in anything, and not supported by anything."150 As complete, the human person can neither be a generic, specific, or numerical part of an individual being, not identical with another individual, nor an accident inhering in another, nor assumed by another individual. Though the rational form constitutes a human being as an intellectual supposit (suppositum intellectuale) distinct from other kinds of subjectivity, it alone is not the total being of man. Only the person embraces the whole man.151

The term "moral" refers to "human acts which are subject . . . to the power of the will according to the natural dictate of reason and according to other circumstances."152 The term "goodness" signifies that something is as it ought to be. The will determines what a thing or action should be. A pen is good, for instance, if it is made as it should be in view of the function for which it has been willed. Because all creatures have been caused by God in conformity with his will, they are good.153

Likewise, a human act is morally good, not by conformity to an eternal law, but insofar as it is commanded by the omnipotent and absolutely free will of God. "With him (God) a thing becomes right solely for the reason that he wants it to be so."154 Because what God wills is good and what he forbids is evil, it is by definition impossible for him to order something bad. As the supreme ethical norm, God’s will should be obeyed. To put it more exactly, the one free God of wisdom, love, power, and mercy is the supreme rule of ethics. Man is morally obliged to follow the laws freely laid down for him by God’s will.155

For Ockham, the ontological foundation of the moral order is man’s dependence on God, as creature on creator. Whereas God who is unconditionally free falls under no obligation, man whose freedom is contingent and created is subject to moral obligation. Man is morally obliged to will what God commands and not to will what God forbids him. Thus the content of the moral law derives from divine precept. "Evil is nothing else than doing something when one is under an obligation to do the opposite."156

It is possible for God’s absolute power, viewed logically apart from all his other attributes, to do everything that involves no contradiction. "Everything which does not include a contradiction nor a moral evil can come from God."157 Not ruled by an eternal law and nobody’s debtor, God is bound (if this can be called an obligation) only by the impossibility of a contradiction which, in reality is nonbeing. To be bound by nonbeing is equivalent to not being bound at all. This, in effect, means that God is absolutely free to command or to forbid whatever he wills. Ockham did not hesitate to draw the logical consequences of his position.

Second, as omnipotent, God can produce as total cause what he can effect as a partial cause. The command of a man that others hate God is concurred in by God as universal and primary cause. "Thus he can be the total cause of an act of hatred of God, and that without any moral malice."158 God’s absolute power can command that a person should hate him or at least not love him.159 By the very fact that God wills something, it is right for it to be done. There would be no sin either in God since he is under no obligation or in man who is not obliged to avoid something beyond his power. Such a situation seems to give rise to an antinomy in Ockham’s ethics. If God commanded a man to hate him, his obedience to that order would be an act of love God. Hence, the fulfillment of God’s command to hate him seems to be an ethical impossibility.

What is at work here is the principle of noncontradiction. God cannot order a man to love and hate him at the same time, which is equivalent to saying that his power can command everything except not to obey him. On recognizing that a certain command is God’s will, man is bound to obey. To do God’s will or, equivalently, to love God, is the highest moral law. "The act by which God is loved above all and for His own sake" is a necessarily virtuous act and "the first of all good acts."160

According to the third consequence of God’s absolute power over the moral order, what is now forbidden regarding creatures can be commanded and what is now commanded can be forbidden. For example, stealing and committing adultery, forbidden by God in the present order, can be commanded as good by God. "They may even be meritoriously performed by man if they fall under divine precept, just as now their opposites, as a matter of fact, fall under the divine precept." Underlying Ockham’s reasoning is his denial of any absolutely necessary connection between loving a creature and loving God. The present way of loving a creature is only contingently ordered to loving God by God’s will. Between love of God and the illicit love of a creature, there is only an extrinsic repugnance arising from God’s actual prohibition. What God prohibits now, he can command if he so desires.161

Right reason is also a norm of morality. "It can be said that every right is in conformity with right reason."162 For an act to be perfectly virtuous, it must not only agree with, but be commanded by right reason which Aristotle includes in the definition of virtue. "For to elicit an act in conformity with right reason is to will what is prescribed by right reason on account of its being so prescribed."163 An act motivated merely for the sake of pleasure would not be virtuous. In emphasizing right reason as the proper motivation, Ockham was following Aristotle who had insisted that for an act to be perfectly virtuous, it must be done not simply because the righteous person would do it, but because it is the right thing to do.

Anchored in reason are certain universal principles which regulate every human act; for example, "everything honest should be done, every good should be loved, everything dictated by right reason should be done."164 Particular practical judgments of conscience are grounded in these general ethical principles. Even if mistaken a man is obliged to will what is prescribed by reason. "A created will which follows an invincibly erroneous conscience is a right will; for the divine will wills that it should follow its reason when this reason is not blameworthy." To act against an invincibly erroneous conscience is to sin.165 The dictates of conscience are expressions of God’s free decision that it should act according to given norms.

In freely legislating, God has laid down a particular moral code obliging all men. While retaining his absolute power (potentia absoluta) to command whatever he desires, God’s ordained power (potentia ordinata) has actually established a definite moral code. All people can discover this natural law which they are obliged to follow. Although God is not constantly changing his laws, he not only could have established another moral order, but could at any time command what he has actually forbidden.166 Ockham’s intention, therefore, is not to undermine the moral order or to promote immorality, but to make unmistakably clear the primacy of God’s absolute power and liberty.

In his political and polemical writings, Ockham inveighed against tyrannical power and the deprivation of natural rights on the basis of right reason.167

Ockham’s political writings were occasioned by disputes involving the Papacy. In criticizing Pope John XXII’s pronouncements on evangelical poverty as heretical and erroneous and in defending his Franciscan confreres, Ockham analyzed natural rights as a legitimate power in conformity with right reason. Man, for example, enjoys a natural God-given right to property, the legitimate power "of disposing of the goods of the earth which right reason would dictate . . . not only to live, but also to live well."168 The right of private property restricts the right of common possession for the due management and procurement of things which are necessary for a good life.169 Willed by God, the natural right of private property comes from the natural law anterior to human convention, and consequently is violable by no earthly power against a man’s will. Although the State can regulate the way property is to be transferred, it cannot legitimately deprive a man of the exercise of the right of private property, still less of the right itself unless there is fault on his part or some reasonable cause,170 for example, his criminal use of property against the common good.

Ockham distinguished different kinds of natural rights. First, there are natural rights which are valid under certain conditions until a contrary convention is established; for example, the right of the Roman people to elect their bishop may be ceded to the cardinals.171 Second, there are natural rights operative in the state of humanity before the Fall and conditional on a state of perfection no longer existing. Third, there are natural rights sharing in the immutability of moral precepts, such as the right of private property and the right to life.

However, these rights are not quite the same. Whereas the right to life cannot be renounced, for example, by starving oneself to death, without sinning, the right of private property can be relinquished without going contrary to the moral law. It is not necessary for every individual to exercise the right of private property in order to fulfill the moral precept of right reason to appropriate temporal goods. For a just and reasonable cause, the Franciscans voluntarily renounce all rights to property.172

Pope John XXII, however, emphatically insisted that it was unjust to use temporal things without having a right to them, and hence that the Franciscans were entitled to use temporal things like food and clothing only because they have a right over them. The common view among the Franciscans, on the contrary was that they could legitimately use those things whose ownership was voluntarily renounced. Ockham defended this common view by maintaining that the Franciscans gave up the right of using (usus juris) as distinguished from that right over their substance, and possessed simply a factual use (usua facti) deriving from mere revocable permission to use the things of another.173 Their use of temporal things was permitted by the Holy See who has the right of ownership and right to use things. Ockham’s concept of evangelical poverty after the example of Christ and the Apostles was declared heretical by John XXII.