OCCAM (OCKHAM, OCKAM, OKAM, OCHAM), William of. – English Franciscan, born in Ockam (Surrey county) around 1290, probably died in Munich in 1349–50. He studied at Oxford, where around 1310 he began theological studies, and between 1315 and 1319 he commented on the *Sentences* and the Bible as a bachelor. He never seems to have attained the title of *magister regens*, which explains why he continued to be referred to with the title of *inceptor*.
At Oxford, Duns Scotus (v.) and Henry of Harclay had begun that process of critical revision of the old philosophical and theological doctrines of the previous generation of masters and given impetus to the opening of that
of Frankfurt on 8 Aug. 1338, with which all canonical penalties fulminated by the Pope against the Emperor were declared void and it was maintained that imperial authority derives immediately from God.
But after 1340 the fortune of Louis the Bavarian also waned, who, deposed by the German princes, died on 7 Oct. 1347. Now deprived of all support, O. attempted to reconcile himself with the Church, returning to the General Chapter of the Franciscans, held in Verona, the seal of the Order that Michael of Cesena, on his death, had entrusted to him. On 8 June 1349, Clement VI authorized William Farinier, general of the Franciscans, to absolve him under certain not excessively harsh conditions. From this moment onwards, no more is heard of him in the documents, and it is inferred that he died at the end of 1349 or in 1350, in Munich, if the news about his tomb in the church of the Franciscans of that city is accurate.
His writings can be divided into two distinct groups: philosophical-theological works and political-social ones. The former, for the most part and perhaps all, as Iserloh maintains against the opinion of Fr. F. Böhner, belong to the period before his flight from Avignon. The latter, on the other hand, are certainly later. To the Oxford period belong the *Expositio aurea super artem veterem* (Bologna 1496: transcription with brief commentaries on the *Isagoge* of Porphyry, the *Categories* and the *Peri hermeneias*), the *Tractatus super librum Elenchorum*, the *Expositio super Physicam*, the *Summulae in libros Physicorum* (Bologna 1491), the *Quaestiones in IV libros super Sententias* (Lyon 1495), the *Quaestiones quodlibetales* (Paris 1487), the *Summa totius logicae* (ibid. 1488), the *De sacramento altaris* (where he expounds his particular doctrines on substance and quantity). There is controversy over other minor writings and the *Centiloquium theologicum* (a list of a hundred propositions, partly paradoxical, derived from the doctrines of theologians).
The philosophical and theological thought of O. can be said to have been fully developed in the writings composed before his journey to Avignon. The entire metaphysical system of O. rests on the new epistemological basis that intuitive knowledge precedes abstractive knowledge, and that only the former grasps the individual and infinitely varied properties of reality, without however reaching the intimate substance of things, which remains unknowable. Abstractive knowledge has as its object only representations and universal concepts, elaborated by our spirit to order the content of intuitive knowledge (cf. *Prologus in I Sententias*, Lyon 1495, q. 1). The universal therefore has no foundation in reality (nominalism [v.]) which is entirely individual (ibid., dist. 2, q. 6; q. 8). From such an epistemological doctrine, in addition to the negation of important traditional theses: agent intellect, cognitive species, universal essences, principle of individuation (v.), distinction between essence and existence, the impossibility of knowing the internal structure of a reality placed outside our consciousness follows, and even the principle of causality is undermined (ibid., dist. 35, q. 2; q. 4). Indeed, O., like other contemporary Franciscans, believes that God, at least *de potentia absoluta*, could give us the intuition of a non-existent reality. Therefore the very existence of God, His uniqueness, and the other attributes cannot be rigorously demonstrated with arguments drawn from Aristotelian physics and metaphysics (*Quaestiones quodlibetales*, I, q. 1; cf. ibid., VII, 17–23). The God of Aristotle is not that of the Faith, whose omnipotence is at the center of reality, to whose free will the chain of all beings is suspended, and who could have created other worlds different from Aristotle’s. Similarly, a true demonstration of the spirituality, freedom, and immortality of the soul is not possible (*Quaestiones quodlibetales*, I, 10).
In bodies, quantity and extension are identified with the very essence of the extended thing (*In IV Sententias*, 4 and 7; *De sacramento altaris*, prol., cc. 16, 26 and 28; *Expositio aurea*; *Liber praedicabilium*, *De quantitate*; *Quaestiones quodlibetales*, IV, 25, 30 and 32). This doctrine, later also upheld by Descartes (*Œuvres*, ed. Adam et Tannery, III, pp. 295–96; IV, pp. 165–70; IX, p. 192 ff.), raised delicate problems with regard to transubstantiation ([v.]; see also EUCHARIST).
From these principles O. himself and his followers, who were sometimes improperly called *nominales*, drew im-
