Title of the Assignment

Compare and contrast the approaches offered regarding human knowledge by Aquinas and Ockham.

Commentary

This one was a bit of a tough one. Everyone thinks that an “open book exam” is easy, but markers will naturally approach an open book exam with a more critical eye simply because you are expected to use your access to the text to provide a better quality response to the exam questions. I was quite gratified to get quite positive feedback and a result of 81% for this one

Ockham and Aquinas

Against a background of what Richard Tarnas refers to as a Scholastic Awakening, starting in the early 12^th century with the development of a school at the Augustinian Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, Aristotle re-emerged as a significant force in medieval thinking, but this time accompanied by sophisticated Arabic commentaries.[1]  As a result, philosophy, the so-called handmaid of theology, and reason took, in many cases, the form of empirical observation and experimentation in cognition of the world.[2] 

Aquinas argued that it was “only through the senses that human beings directly connect with the mind-independent individuals which populate the corporeal world.”[3]  In addition, he promoted an idea of our physical senses being enhanced by internal senses; Common Sense, Imagination, a Cognitive Sense of Discernment and a sensitive memory.[4]  Aquinas and his tutor Albertus developed earlier Christian traditions around God’s providential intelligence and the order and beauty extant in the world, leading to a conclusion that experience and understanding of the natural world led inevitably to a better understanding of the Creator.[5]  This experience and understanding through not just the five external senses, but enhanced by the use of the internal senses, leads to an understanding through “the particular” being experienced, to a deeper understanding of “the universal”, predicated on the plurality of individuals.[6]  As Joseph Owens observes in relation to Aquinas, “Only intellect and reason can know the order in which one thing stands to another in the observable world.”[7]  This clearly demonstrates Aquinas’ link between a direct engagement with the observable world to understand both this world and the Creator of the world. 

Maria Antognazza notes Aquinas’ argument that the intellect makes or actualises universality and universals because “the intellect abstracts from the singular mode of existence that things have in their extra-mental reality.”[8]  Tarnas notes Aquinas’ thinking, that the Word of God “… was directly relevant to the immediate particularities of human experience.”[9]  Therefore, Aquinas concluded that “the more the world was explored and understood, the greater knowledge of and reverence for God would result.”[10]   For example, Aquinas holds that understanding nature’s order helps humans to understand God’s creativity and omnipotence in that the patterns of nature are subject to the sovereignty of God.[11] 

Aquinas was generally Aristotelian and embraced Aristotle’s view of the substantial forms as separately existing entities.[12]  In practice, this meant that he saw the substantial form of nature as indicative of the universal expressed in its Creator.  Human language is therefore a “worthy instrument” for articulating the mysteries of creation because it incarnated “the divine wisdom”.[13]  Thus, Aquinas regularly quotes Paul “For [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” (Rom 1:20[14])[15]  Tarnas makes the observation, that perhaps “Aquinas’ summa [was] one of the final steps of the medieval mind towards full intellectual independence.”[16] 

Aquinas and Ockham would be rightly considered to be opposed in their approach to human knowledge.  Ockham saw a sharp division between revealed theology and natural sense-based sciences.[17]  Ockham, says Tarnas, approached cognition of the world around him with precision as did Aquinas, but arrived at radically different conclusions.[18]  Rather than identifying universals in nature, Ockham rejected universals as limiting the omnipotence of God.[19]  For example, Ockham asserted a sensory intuitive cognition for identifying material particulars that is insufficient for comprehending complex cognitive categorisation and is insufficient for passing judgement on what that intuition gives rise to.[20]  In other words, merely experiencing nature is insufficient to allow perception, except in a very general sense, of the Creator behind creation.  This is a rejection, seemingly of the revelation of God in Nature as a form of apologetic.  To use Maria Antognazza’s example, one can identify that an object is red and that an object is a dressing gown, but in order to know the truth of the colour of the dressing gown, one has to see that as a matter of experience, the dressing gown is red.[21]  This is the theory of the “properties of terms”, part of the logica modernorum which promoted semantical analysis such that in effect, conclusions must be precisely drawn from directly observable data.[22] 

To counter Aquinas, then, human language is not a “worthy instrument” for articulating the mysteries of creation but rather must be disciplined to merely articulate directly observed phenomena.  Ockham admits the possibility of “non-existents” but asserts that if God grants us an intuition of such non-existents, then our observation can only be that these things intuited are “non-existent”.[23]  Ockham argues that the same knowledge (abstract and singularity) is “intuitive and also abstractive”.[24]  The nuance therefore in Ockham’s philosophy is not that nature does not indicate a Creator, for example, but rather that human intellect is incapable of drawing firm conclusions on those things it does not explicitly and directly experience, even if the human mind can perceive some “forms”, whilst denying the existence of Platonic forms.[25]  Ockham thus took Aristotle’s concrete particulars theory to its logical extreme.[26]  This nominalism opposes Platonism and proposes discourse only around familiar concrete particulars, dismissing universals as a linguistic expression only.[27]

Aquinas therefore sought to see the Creator expressed in nature and therefore allowed the drawing of conclusions about God from exploration and experience of nature.  Ockham drew the opposite conclusion that one should explore the concrete particulars of nature without speculating on the religious truth behind that nature.   Tarnas asserts that Ockham “forcefully proclaimed a new form of the double truth universe, with a religious truth and a scientific truth…” and in so doing sought to preserve the pre-eminence of Christian Doctrine by “firmly defining the limits of the natural reason.”[28]  In so doing, he directly opposed Aquinas, limiting the conclusions drawn by Aquinas that truth could be found anywhere.

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[1] Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, 1 online resource (544 pages) vols. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2011), 175–77, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=745253; cf. Lydia Schumacher, “The History and Future of Philosophy’s Relationship with Theology,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 83.5 (2022): 322, https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2022.2137563.

[2] Tarnas, Passion, 176–78.

[3] Maria Rose Antognazza, “Intuitive Cognition in the Latin Medieval Tradition.,” Philosophy 31.4 (2023): 677, https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2161467.

[4] Antognazza, “Cognition,” 677.

[5] Tarnas, Passion, 179.

[6] Antognazza, “Cognition,” 677–78.

[7] Joseph Owens, “Human Reason and the Moral Order in Aquinas,” Studia 28.1 (1990): 155.

[8] Antognazza, “Cognition,” 682.

[9] Tarnas, Passion, 179.

[10] Tarnas, Passion, 179.

[11] Tarnas, Passion, 180.

[12] Edward Craig, ed., Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London, UK: Routledge, 2000), 43.

[13] Tarnas, Passion, 181.

[14] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version) copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved

[15] Tarnas, Passion, 182.

[16] Tarnas, Passion, 201.

[17] Craig, Routledge, 931.

[18] Tarnas, Passion, 201.

[19] Craig, Routledge, 931.

[20] Antognazza, “Cognition,” 681.

[21] Antognazza, “Cognition,” 687.

[22] Craig, Routledge, 931.

[23] Antognazza, “Cognition,” 688.

[24] Ockham, Ordinatio I, Prologus, q.1; in Philosophical Writings, 22 quoted in Antognazza, “Cognition,” 689.

[25] Tarnas, Passion, 201, 203.

[26] Tarnas, Passion, 202.

[27] Craig, Routledge, 634.

[28] Tarnas, Passion, 205–6.

Note that the following Bibliography is broader than what is cited in this essay because it relates to three different essays that formed the Take Home Exam.

Works Cited

Antognazza, Maria Rose. “Intuitive Cognition in the Latin Medieval Tradition.” Philosophy 31.4 (2023): 675–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2161467.

Chatraw, Joshua D., and Mark D Allen. Apologetics at the Cross: An Introduction for Christian Witnesses. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2018.

Craig, Edward, ed. Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London, UK: Routledge, 2000.

Davis, G Scott. “THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEMOCRACY: Molly Farneth, Hegel’s Social Ethics: Religion, Conflict, and Rituals of Reconciliation.” Journal of Religious Ethics 48.1 (2020): 152–71.

Howe, Richard G. “Defending the Handmaid: How Theology Needs Philosophy.” Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry 21.1 (2024): 99–111. https://www.nobts.edu/baptist-center-theology/.

Lewis, Thomas A. “Religion, Reconciliation, and Modern Society: The Shifting Conclusions of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.” Harvard Theological Review 106.1 (2013): 37–60.

Lucas, Dick. The Message of Colossians and Philemon: Fullness and Freedom. The Bible Speaks Today. Edited by John Stott. Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 2003.

Maritz, Daniel J. “By Scripture and Plain Reason: A Historical Retrieval of the Relationship between Theology and Philosophy to Better Engage with Present-Day Secularism.” In Die Skriflig 57.1 (2023): 1–14. https://www.doi.org/10.4102/ids.v57i1.2908.

McGrath, Alister E. Christian Apologetics: An Introduction. Hoboken NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2024.

Owens, Joseph. “Human Reason and the Moral Order in Aquinas.” Studia 28.1 (1990): 155–73.

Schumacher, Lydia. “The History and Future of Philosophy’s Relationship with Theology.” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 83.5 (2022): 318–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2022.2137563.

Scruton, Roger. A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein. 2nd Edition. New York, USA: Routledge, 1995.

Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. 1 online resource (544 pages) vols. New York: Ballantine Books, 2011. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=745253.

Threet, Dan. “Mill’s Social Pressure Puzzle.” Social Theory & Practice 44.4 (2018): 539–65. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract201872743.

Woo, B Hoon. “The Understanding of Gisbertus Voetius and Rene Descartes on the Relationship of Faith and Reason, and Theology and Philosophy.” The Westminster Theological Journal 75.1 (2013): 45–63.

Works Consulted

Boyd, Craig A. and Don Thorsen. Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy: An Introduction to Issues and Approaches. Grand Rapids Michigan: Baker Academic (2018)

Giertych, Wojciech. “Aquinas on Conscience” Salesianum 86.3 (2024): 408-445. 0036-3502.

Hastings, Ross. Substitution or Satisfaction?: Commentary by Douglas Farrow on the Atonement Theology of Aquinas and Anselm in Theological Negotiations. Crux: A Quarterly Journal of Christian Thought and Opinion 55.2 (2019): 15-23 0011-2186

Loizides, Antis. “Mill on Happiness: A question of method” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22.2 (2014): 302-321 0960-8788

McDermott, Timothy. Beginnings and Ends: Some Thoughts On Thomas Aquinas, Virtue and Emotions. Studies in Christian Ethics 12.1 (1999): 35-47 10.1177/095394689901200105

Philp, Mark and Georgios Varouxakis. Happiness and Utility: Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen. London, UK: UCL Press (2019

Slotemaker, John Thomas. Ontology, Theology and the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham. The St Anselm Journal 9.2 (2014): 1-20 1545-3367