Ockham and the Divine Freedom

Abstract

One way to approach the philosophy of William of Ockham (1290-1347) is to begin with his epistemology and point out its limits and its inadequacy. From this perspective Ockham emerges as a severe critic of Duns Scotus and Henry of Ghent and to some extent an adversary of Aquinas. One can also find in him a critique of previous Augustinianism and the origin of a more modern way in fourteenthcentury scholasticism. That Via Moderna for all its logical precision is judged as leading to a drastic restriction of philosophical truth and to a scepticism about any knowledge beyond the empirical order. As a result the whole area of faith is greatly expanded and becomes in turn the only safeguard against a scepticism introduced by philosophy.1 There are certainly adequate grounds in Ockham for such an approach. Against Scotus* world of formally complex realities Ockham consistently maintained a world of uniquely existing singulars, each of which was only itself and pointed only to itself. Knowledge of these singular beings was grounded in a sensible and intellectual intuition of their existential presence to the knower. All other knowledge became abstract knowledge which divorced itself from existence. Such abstract knowledge resulted in a relationship of concepts, a logic, a pattern of interpretations, which might be adequate as a possible explanation of the world but which could give no guarantee of its existen-