Competing schools of philosophy differ on whether Universals are independent of the objects they signify, or a fundamental property of the objects themselves. For example, according to this framework, chairs owe their existence to the property of “chairness,” which informs what in the physical world can and cannot be a chair. Much of Ockham’s scholarship dealt with the problem of Universals, entities which exist in relation to other entities and which unite similar entities as general properties. The reality, however, is rather more complicated, and the work of William of Ockham serves as a good case study for how Scholasticism helped lay the groundwork for modern-day Empiricism and Analytical Philosophy. The focus on theology in particular can make Scholasticism seem very alien to modern philosophy students and has given the discipline something of a bad reputation. The school of Medieval philosophy in which Ockham worked, also known as Scholasticism, was quite different from our modern conceptions of philosophy and logic, being heavily centred on theology and the writings of Aristotle. Much of Ockham’s philosophical career was devoted to metaphysics and logic, and it is from this work that we get his famous Razor. He travelled around Italy and Germany for a while before settling in Munich, where he lived out the rest of his life before dying in 1347. For the next four years Ockham lived in Avignon as the hearings dragged on and the conflict between the Dominicans and Franciscans grew ever more heated, until finally making his escape in 1328. Ockham saw the Catholic Church’s vast accumulation of wealth and power as antithetical to Jesus’s teachings and even went so far as to declare the Pope a heretic and call for his abdication. Ockham passionately upheld these views, and in 1324 a rival at Oxford reported him to Pope John XXII, who summoned Ockham to the Papal Court – at that time based in Avignon, France – for a hearing. He even went so far as to tear down a brand-new home specially built for his Order. Saint Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order, had concluded that Jesus did not own property and modelled his own monastic order on his example, requiring his monks to take a vow of poverty and rely on the charity of others for food, shelter, and other necessities. Among the many issues over which the Franciscans and Dominicans disagreed was whether Jesus and his followers owned property. As a Franciscan, Ockham was theologically at odds with the dominant Dominican Order, whose views at the time were epitomized by the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. It was Ockham’s lectures and commentary on the Sentences which first landed him in hot water with the Catholic Church on philosophical and theological grounds. From 1310 to 1317 he studied theology at Oxford University and began lecturing on bishop Peter of Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences, the standard handbook for theologians at the time. Ockham began his education at the London Convent for the Franciscan Order, studying the usual scholastic topics such as logic, natural philosophy, and theology. As we shall soon see, his choice of monastic order would have a profound impact on his philosophical views and the theological controversies in which he would later become embroiled. Born in the town of Ockham in Surrey in 1258, little is known about Ockham’s early life prior to his joining the Franciscan Order at age 14. Ockham’s Razor is named after Willam of Ockham, an English Franciscan friar and theologian who lived during the 13th and 14th Centuries. If you’ve ever spent any time arguing on the internet, you’ve likely come across a philosophical principle known as ‘Ockham’s Razor.’ Along with ad hominem attacks and comparing people you don’t like to Hitler, Ockham’s Razor is a favourite argument of keyboard warriors everywhere, most often understood as meaning “the simplest argument is most often the correct one.” But where did this strangely-named principle come from, and does it hold as much rhetorical weight as many seem to think it does? Or is it just something people use in order to sound smarter and win arguments?
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