The Political Thought of William of Ockham

Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Third Series

by Arthur Stephen McGrade

The English Franciscan, William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349), was one of the most important thinkers of the later middle ages. Summoned to Avignon in 1324 to answer charges of heresy, Ockham became convinced that Pope John XXII was himself a heretic in denying the complete poverty of Christ and the apostles and a tyrant in claiming supremacy over the Roman empire. Ockham's political writings were a result of these personal convictions, but also include systematic discourses on the basis and functions of spiritual and secular power as well as exhaustive discussions of Franciscan poverty and the general problem of papal heresy. Ockham emerges in this study as a man deeply committed to natural and Christian human rights, who found these fundamental values so seriously menaced in his time that their survival could be assured only by radical, even revolutionary, personal action and by a basic reworking of traditional political thought.

Genres: Philosophy

Hardcover

First published June 28, 1974

Reviews

[Turbulent_Architect]

William of Ockham occupies an ambiguous position in the history of political thought. To some conservative commentators, he is the originator of a secularist ideology responsible for undermining the medieval social order. To some more sympathetic readers, he is a theologian embroiled in a political controversy through no fault of his own and whose practical views fall well within the mainstream of medieval thought. To other still, he is neither an anti-papal radical nor an apolitical theologian but a constitutional liberal who anticipates certain aspects of nineteenth-century liberalism. One is tempted to say ask: Will the real Ockham please stand up?

Arthur Stephen McGrade’s The Political Thought of William of Ockham (1974) seeks to shed some light on this situation. Previous commentators tended to fall into one of two traps. The first is to read Ockham’s post-1324 political writings in light of his pre-1324 speculative thought, notably his nominalism, even though he never actually draws any such connection himself. The second is to presuppose that the political writings were a series of ad hoc attempts to justify Ockham’s real or imagined practical goals—e.g., legitimating the rule of Louis of Bavaria, undermining the Avignon papacy—instead of a coherent political system in its own right.

McGrade’s book avoids both traps: His goal is to examine Ockham’s political thought on its own terms without presupposing either a metaphysical background or any particular political intent. What emerges is an internally coherent and often innovative system of political philosophy. As McGrade reads him, Ockham seeks to trace a middle ground between the curialism of Giles of Rome and the laicism of Marsilius of Padua. Against Giles, Ockham maintains that political power comes from God not through the pope, but through the people. Against Marsilius, he grants the Church its own legitimacy independent of secular political power.

The upshot of McGrade’s analysis is to paint Ockham as a constructive political thinker in his own right, one, moreover, whose views are strikingly modern in a number of ways. On the one hand, Ockham’s theory is, in sharp contrast to his contemporaries, postmetaphysical insofar as it avoids resting political legitimacy on any substantive conception of the good life. On the other hand, it entails a disentanglement of the functions of ecclesiastical and secular institutions that anticipates the modern separation of Church and State. If there’s one takeaway from this book, it’s that Ockham deserves a lot more attention in overviews of the development of Western political thought than he typically receives.

[mwr]

Ockham excommunicated a pope and wrote a tome arguing that it is possible to eat bread without owning it. This delightful book provides the context to render those claims meaningful.