Ockham on the Virtues

CHAPTER TWO: Ockham's Influence and the Origins of His Intellectual Isolation

CHAPTER T W O IOckham's Influence and the Origins of His Intellectual Isolation The intellectual climate changed a great deal in Ockham's time. The English intellectual milieu between 1315 and 1325, when Ockham was most active as a philosopher-theologian, was much more hospitable to his views than it was a decade later. As William Courtenay has shown, Oxford in the early fourteenth century was less characterized by schools than was the later period. Views about what was and was not orthodox changed, as did attitudes toward Bl. John Duns Scotus and St. Thomas Aquinas. Some of Ockham's most controversial views related to the Aristotelian categories-specifically, the categories of relation and quantity. Many of these view!:? were anticipated in part by Peter John Olivi, an earlier Franciscan philosopher-theologian. Invited by Augustinus Triumphus to censure those views, the Council of Vienne, which censured some of Olivi's opinions, declined to condemn his views onthe category of quantity (Clem. 1.1.1).1 Olivi's views on quantity were attacked by Scotus,2 who himself posited novel theses on the relations in the Godhead. Scotus's controversial discussion ofnontemporal "instants" in the Godhead and relations between God and creatures is the probable object of a condemnation at Oxford in 1314.3 Those views Ockham rejected as abusive or simply false (OTh III, 295). A staunch proponent of the condemnations of 1277, whose most controversial views had escaped censure in 1311-12 at the Council of Vienne, and an opponent of some of Scotus's more innovative views, Ockham must have thought himself reasonably secure in 1320. Yet he had to answer criticism ofhis own views on quantity and on relations as early as 1323.4 As an Oxford theologian, Ockham was preoccupied with the works of Scotus. Few of Ockham's important philosophical or I 12 ~) ,..".)~. '"f. 13 I Ockham's Influence' theological doctrines can be fully understood without reference to Scotus's views. But Ockham's citation practice serves to conceal the extent of the influence. Ockham often borrows the basic elements of Scotus's view tacitly, naming Scotus only in connection with disagreements, even when the point in dispute is minor. Most notably, Ockham disagrees with Scotus on the problem of universals: Ockham denies the existence of common natures and attacks realism. But even when he disagrees with Scotus, his respect is evident; for example, when treating universals, he takes care to distinguish misinterpretations of Scotus from the views themselves, which he quotes extensively (OTh II, 100-173). Once, when criticizing Scotus, Ockham remarks that Scotus probably would not have disagreed, given his great knowledge of logic (OTh II, 344). But respectful as he was, Ockham shows no special reverence in citing Scotus; he normally refers simply to John or Brother John, in De connexione virtutum (a.1 41) and in his early Reportatio commentary on the Sentences (OTh VII, 100, 348). Subsequently Ockham does refer to Scotus as the Subtle Doctor, adding that he is so called because he exceeds others in the subtlety ofjudgment (OTh II, 161), but noting that Scotus is not an authority for him in the same way as he is to his followers (OTh I, 44-47). Ockham does not mince words when he thinks Scotus is mistaken (OTh II, 321, 332). Ockham's manner of reference contrasts with that of Adam Wodeham, his student, in about 1330, who refers to Scotus as "Our Doctor,"-that is, the Franciscan Order's doctor (L. sec. d.1 q.3 n.3, I: 230). Ockham did theology precisely in the period when Franciscans first began to venerate Scotus. Ockham's less deferential approach to Scotus may explain in part the hostility with which he was regarded by such fellow Franciscans as John Reading and Walter Chatton. The dispute between Ockham and Scotus 's defenders was as much a matter of attitude as of doctrine, and it has served to obscure both the extent of Ockham's debt to Scotus and the degree to which Ockham influenced Scotists, such as Reading and Chatton.5 If Ockham's criticisms of Scotus were a product of intimate familiarity, his knowledge of Aquinas was much more limited.6 Indeed, instead of discussing Aquinas, when contending against views associated today with Aquinas, he often has other medieval authors in mind. Not Aquinas but Giles of Rome is his probable opponent when discussing motion; when discussing quantity, the views under attack are those of Richardus Mediavilla , not...