A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government

by William of Ockham, John Kilcullen (Translator), Arthur Stephen McGrade (Editor)

William of Ockham (c. 1285-c. 1387) was the most eminent theologian and philosopher of his day, a Franciscan friar who came to believe that the Avignonese papacy of John XXII had set out to destroy the religious ideal on which his order was based: the complete poverty of Christ and the Apostles. A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government is an attack on the claims of the medieval Church, specifically the papacy, to universal spiritual and secular power. Written at the time of the emergence of the European nation-states, Ockham's work issued a direct hard-hitting challenge to the claims of limitless papal power. The text is accompanied by a full bibliography, a chronology and an introduction setting his work in its intellectual and historical context.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Religion, History

252 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 1992

About the author

William of Ockham (also Occam, Hockham, or any of several other spellings, IPA: /ˈɒkəm/) (c. 1288 - c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, from Ockham, a small village in Surrey, near East Horsley. He is considered, along with Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Averroes (ibn Rushd in the Middle East), to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although commonly known for Occam's Razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is April 10.

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ockham argues against the political power of the pope. He relies mainly on dull theology. Unfinished.

[Leonardo]

la iglesia es la multitud de los fieles – “Ecclesia est multitudo fidelium”- significando que no es superior y distinta de la comunidad de los Cristianos, sino inmanente a dicha comunidad.

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