International Ockham Colloquium

Abstract

INTERNATIONAL OCKHAM COLLOQUIUM William of Ockham, an English Franciscan and highly regarded philosopher, theologian and logician, was born around 1285, probably in the little hamlet (Oakham) of Ockham some 20 miles southwest of London. There were three international conventions which celebrated the sixth centenary of Ockham's birth. The first took place as a week-long conference at Queen's College in Oxford, April 15-19, 1985 under the auspices of the Ecclesiastical History Society and organized by professors Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks. Actually, this convention also commemorated John Wyclif who died on the last day of 1384. There were over ninety scholars in attendance from Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. AU of the research team from the Franciscan Institute attended, namely Gedeon Gal, O.F.M., Girard Etzkorn, Francis Kelley, Rega Wood and Romuald Green, O.F.M. Kelley, Etzkorn and Wood gave papers at the conference, whose proceedings were published in the volume From Ockham to Wyclif1 On Saturday, April 20, 1985, many of the scholars journeyed to Ockham where in All Saints Church, probably the place of Ockham's baptism, a special commemorative celebration was held. On this occasion, Fr. Gedeon Gal, O.F.M., presented a set of the Ockham edition to AU Saints Church. The second international Ockham colloquium was held under the auspices of the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University, October 10-12, 1985, organized by Girard Etzkorn and Romuald Green under the direction of Fr. Conrad Harkins, O.F.M., director of the Franciscan Institute, and with the assistance of the 1 From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks, Studies in Church History-Subsidia 5 (Oxford: BlackweU, 1987, xvi + 486 pp.); F. Kelley, "Ockham: Avignon, Before and After" 1-18; G. Etzkorn, "Codex Merton 284: Evidence of Ockham's Early Influence in Oxford 31-42; R. Wood, "Intuitive Cognition and Divine Omnipotence: Ockham in Fourteenth-Century Perspective" 51-61. 144GIRARD J. ETZKORN Franciscan Institute and Friedsam Library personnel and the University's staff and public relations office. This event, in scope and magnitude, was probably the largest ever to have been hosted by St. Bonaventure University. There were over 100 scholars in attendance from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Principal speakers at plenary sessions were Umberto Eco, professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, who spoke on "Signification and Denotation from Boethius to Ockham"; Norman Kretzmann, Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University, who spoke on "Ockham and the Creation of the Beginningless World"; Marilyn McCord Adams, Professor of PhUosophy at UCLA, who spoke on "Ockham's Moral Theory" and Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, who spoke "On Locating Ockham within the Orthodox Dogmatic Tradition." Because of Ockham's reputation as a logician, a goodly number of papers were read at the 'satellite' sessions regarding his contributions to logic, but there were also a considerable number of papers dedicated to his theory of knowledge, his views regarding natural philosophy, ethics, plus a goodly number of talks concerning the political and ecclesiological views of the Venerable Inceptor. Still other papers dealt with comparisons of Ockham's views with his contemporaries or near-contemporaries. There were also papers dealing with historical criticism evaluative of the life and writings of Ockham. A symposium was held on the topics of critical editing and translating. The participants of the symposium were: Gedeon Gal, O.F.M., Francis Kelley, Jacqueline Hamesse, Sandra Edwards and Alfred Freddoso. The Colloquium was also a celebration of the completion of the critical edition of Ockham's Philosophical and Theological works. At the time of the Colloquium, all but the final volume containing treatises dubiously or spuriously attributed to Ockham were virtually completed. Thus, the research and publication of the 17volume edition was completed during the period from 1963, when Fr. Gedeon Gal first came to the Franciscan Institute, and 1988 when the final volume appeared. INTERNATIONAL OCKHAM COLLOQUIUM145 Congratulatory messages were received from Pope John Paul II, from Pio Laghi the U.S. papal nuncio, from John Vaughn, minister general of...