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Major Study of William of Ockham, A masterpiece
The Philosophy of William of Ockham: In the Light of Its Principles by Armand Maurer (Studies and Texts, No 133: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies) Every philosophy is sustained by a number of elemental principles that give it cohesion and unity. Ockham's is no exception. The principles of the divine omnipotence and the rule of parsimony of thought known as 'Ockham's razor', and others like the principle of non-contradiction, help to shape the entire range of his thought. Many of his conclusions on matters as diverse as God's knowledge, will and power, on creation and the causality of natural things, and on human intuition and morality are reducible to them. These principles are not unique to Ockham but were common to all the scholastics. Yet it is precisely in confrontation with the views of his predecessors and contemporaries such as Scotus, Henry of Gent, Aquinas and Chatton that the particular force and character of his thought are revealed. Over and again he sets each principle to powerful use, but allows no single one of dominate, or to yield all its consequences. Martin Heidegger once declared, 'Every thinker thinks but one single thought'. The original and focal point of Ockham's thought is the singular or individual thing (res singularis), as common nature (natura communis) is the central conception of Scotism, and the act of existing (esse) is of Thomism. With Ockham the traditional conjugations of being come to signify the thing itself in its ineluctable unity. The concept of being is univocal, standing for and signifying individuals. A being is radically diverse and incommunicable, differing from every other being not only in number but also in essence. Indeed, an individual thing can no longer be said to have an essence; it is an essence. Ockham takes his place among the great philosophers because, like them, he drew out all the implications of his insight. He remains a seminal thinker: his denial of common essences, his emphasis on language in philosophical discourse, all anticipate significant developments in modern philosophy. ... Read more

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The Franciscan William of Ockham was an English medieval philosopher, theologian, and political theorist. Ockham is important not only in the history of philosophy and theology, but also in the development of early modern science and of modern notions of property rights and church-state relations. This volume offers a full discussion of all significant aspects of Ockham's thought: logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and natural philosophy, epistemology, ethics, action theory, political thought and theology. It is the first study of Ockham in any language to make full use of the new critical editions of his works, and to consider recent discoveries concerning his life, education, and influences. ... Read more

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Long thought to be the most important medieval philosopher and theologian after Scotus and the founder of late medieval Nominalism, the meaning and influence of William of Ockham's thought have become matters of intense debate in recent years. After a survey of the changing assessment of Nominalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a new understanding of twelfth-century Nominalism with related elements in the thought of Augustine and Anselm, this book examines the reception of Ockham's thought at Oxford and Paris, the crisis over Ockhamism at Paris in the 1335 to 1345 period, and concludes with an examination of the legacy of Ockhamist thought in the late medieval period. ... Read more

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This text presents translations of crucial texts in the debate between Duns Scotus and William of Ockham on universals. ... Read more

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Good translation and edition of a difficult text
The argument contained in this treatise is incredibly difficult to follow and grasp. As a result, this is a difficult text to approach without either a respectible background in medieval (particularily thirteenth and fourteenth century) scholastic thought, or an expert to guide you through.

That said, the text is important if one wants to understand the thought of the fourteenth century. Ockham directly engages Scotus' theory of the simultaneous capacity for opposites as well as touching upon certain of Aquinas' doctrines relating to contingency and related Christian doctrines. Further, the translators have included texts related to the themes of this work from some of Ockham's other works.

In short, this is a good text to add to a collection of medieval philosophy and theology, but not likely to be found engaging to the casual medievalist. ... Read more

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This book makes available for the first time an English translation of William Ockham's work on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, which contains his theory of scientific demonstration and philosophy of science. John Lee Longeway also includes an extensive commentary and a detailed history of the intellectual background to Ockham's work in the Latin Middle Ages.

Longeway puts Ockham into context by providing a scholarly account of the reception and study of the Posterior Analytics in the Latin Middle Ages, with a detailed discussion of Robert Grosseteste, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Giles of Rome. In a series of appendices, Longeway includes shorter translations of some important related work by Giles of Rome and John of Cornwall. ... Read more

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Provides deep context for Ockham's Science & Razor
Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham: A Translation of Summa Logicae III-II: De Syllogismo Demonstrativo, and Selections from the Prologue to the Ordinatio by John Lee Longeway (University of Notre Dame Press) makes available for the first time an English translation of William of Ockham's work on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, which contains his theory of scientific demonstration and philosophy of science. John Lee Longeway also includes an extensive commentary and a detailed history of the intellectual background to Ockham's work. He puts Ockham into context by providing a scholarly account of the reception and study of the Posterior Analytics in the Latin Middle Ages, with a detailed discussion of Robert Grosseteste, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Giles of Rome. In a series of appendices, Longeway includes shorter translations of some important related work by Giles of Rome and John of Cornwall.
In his introductory discussion, Longeway examines the exact character of the highest sort of demonstration (demonstratio potissima), the relations of the empirical sciences to mathematics, natural causation and the manner in which natural laws come to be known, the possibility of natural knowledge, our knowledge of God, and the relation of theology to the other sciences. Longeway discusses the way in which scientific epistemology and theory of demonstration corresponds to the metaphysical position of its interpreter, in particular to the Neoplatonism of Grosseteste, the radical Aristotelianism of Giles of Rome and Albert the Great, the more moderate Aristotelianism of Aquinas, and the nominalistic empiricism of Ockham. Throughout the book, Longeway makes a case for Ockham's importance as the founder of empiricism in the West.
Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham will interest philosophers and historians of science and logic, as well as those who study medieval philosophy or early modern philosophy.
The medievalist needs no convincing that William of Ockham (ca. 1285-1347) is worthy of study. At one time Ockham's views might have been regarded as a clever but uninstructed sign of the decay of Scholastic discourse, but, with the work of such scholars as Philotheus Boehner, Ernest Moody, and Marilyn McCord Adams, those days are now receding into the past. Nonetheless, outside the small circle of students of medieval philosophy and logic, a translation of Ockham's work on the theory of demonstration, even combined with a broader study of its Scholastic background, may seem to require some justification.
This is unfortunate, for contemporary philosophers should find Ockham a fascinating figure. He is the founder of European empiricism. Like Locke and Hume, he relied on the logical analysis of language to ground a rejection of Platonic metaphysics, and he found the source of all our concepts and knowledge of the natural world in our experience of particulars. Moreover, he avoided that error of Early Modern empiricism that now seems most objectionable: the attempt to construct our public world from purely subjective experience. Ockham is a direct realist, relying on the causal relation between concept and object to establish the concept's reference. In his view, what makes belief cognition is the right causal relation between the knower and what is known, not the possession of a sufficient justification for one's belief. Indeed, the accusation of skepticism brought against him, and the skeptical bent of some of his later followers, arises from a typical justificationist misapprehension of his response to skepticism, for Ockham manages without the implausible claim that we can ever have a subjective guarantee that any of our beliefs about the natural world is infallible.'
Ockham's theory of scientific demonstration, the subject of the texts translated and discussed here, presents his conclusions in philosophy of science. In their discussion of demonstration, Ockham and his predecessors approached some of the most fundamental problems of a scientific empiricism, both ancient and modern. How are concepts of natural things formed on the basis of sensory experience? What is the relationship between the notions of everyday people, from which a scientist necessarily begins his research, and the more sophisticated scientific conceptions of these things-- can we and the scientist even be said to be speaking of the same things? How are causal principles rooted in the real natures of things, and how is it possible to know them? How does functionality occur in the natural world? What is the nature and function of scientific knowledge, and how is it related to knowledge of a more ordinary sort? All these questions are dealt with from the standpoint of a scientific realism rooted in the conviction that scientific explanation captures the causal structure of reality.'
But the texts translated here are not only philosophical documents. They depend on, and purport to interpret, Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, and they should be of considerable interest to the modern interpreter of Aristotle. Ockham focuses on a problem that has recently come to the fore in the literature on the Posterior Analytics --how does one demonstrate an attribute of a subject?
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Chapters: William of Ockham, Albertus Magnus, Jean Buridan, Robert Balfour, Thomas Aquinas, Cesare Cremonini, Boethius, Duns Scotus, Domingo Báñez, John Mair, Giles of Rome, Cuthbert Tunstall, Albert of Saxony, Gerardus Odonis, John Case, Pietro Pomponazzi, Jacopo Zabarella, Conimbricenses, Gilbert de La Porrée, Francis Robortello, John Hennon, Niccolò Cabeo, Guido Terrena, Walter Burley, Peter of Auvergne, Franciscus Toletus, Lambertus de Monte, Domingo de Soto, Philip Faber, Sebastián Fox Morcillo, Pedro Da Fonseca. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 164. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino; ca. 1225 7 March 1274) was an Italian priest of the Catholic Church in the Dominican Order, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis. He is frequently referred to as Thomas because "Aquinas" refers to his residence rather than his surname. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory. Aquinas is held in the Catholic Church to be the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood. The works for which he is best-known are the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles. One of the 33 Doctors of the Church, he is considered by many Catholics to be the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher. Aquinas was born c. 1225 out of his father Count Landulf of Aquino's castle of Roccasecca in the Kingdom of Sicily, in the present-day Lazio. Th...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=21490957 ... Read more

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Chapters: Roger Bacon, William of Ockham, Francis of Assisi, Rumi, Alexander of Hales, Ramon Llull, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Madhvacharya, Najm-Al-Din Razi, Dnyaneshwar, Giles of Rome, Peter Olivi, Pillai Lokacharya, Walter of Bruges, Witelo, Étienne Tempier, Boetius of Dacia, Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Tabrizi, John of Paris, William of Auvergne, Altheides, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, William of Auxerre, Petrus de Ibernia, Andrew of Cornwall, Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza, Walter Chatton. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 189. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Jall ad-Dn Muammad Balkh (Persian: ), also known as Jall ad-Dn Muammad Rm (Persian: ), and popularly known as Mowln (Persian: ) but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rm is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most of his life in an area called Rm because it was once ruled by the Byzantine Empire. Rumi was born in Greater Balkh (Bakhtarzamin), and thus he is called Balkhi. He was born in the village of Wakhsh, a small town located at the river Wakhsh in what is now Tajikistan. Wakhsh belonged to the larger province of Balkh, and in the year Rumi was born, his father was an appointed scholar there. Both these cities were at the time included in the Greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorasan, the easternmost province of historical Persia, and were part of the Khwarezmian Empire. His birthplace and native language both indicate a Persian heritage. His father decided to migrate westwards due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorasan, opposition to the Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by Bah ud-Dn Walad (Rumi's father), or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm. Rum...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=16433 ... Read more