![]() With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.” The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names serving our convenience. It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence. ![]() The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.įor this reason I turn to William of Occam as the best representative of a change which came over man’s conception of reality at this historic juncture. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. ![]() Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. “Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. In Weaver’s understanding, Ockham’s (or Occam’s) nominalism is the main “idea” that led to all of the unpleasant “consequences” that we in the West are suffering today: Most instances of scapegoating Ockham trace their origins back to Richard Weaver’s influential book Ideas Have Consequences (1948). Anything theological-such as the existence of God or his attributes-can be known by faith alone (thus, apparently, laying the groundwork for the Reformation). We can know that one thing can cause another thing to happen only based on repeated experience, not on some abstract knowledge of a thing’s nature (thus laying the groundwork for modern science). We can call human beings “human” based on their sharing a certain resemblance with each other, but we can’t infer anything about them based on their common name. In Ockham’s view, the universe is inhabited by a number of individual things that have no necessary connection with each other. ![]() However, Ockham denied the real existence of universal natures. Thus, for instance, if an individual was referred to as “human,” it was because he really possessed a human nature that was ordered toward flourishing through a life of virtue (as Aristotle says) or participation in the divine life (as Christian revelation says). Prior to Ockham, the dominant Western understanding held that individual things (“particulars”) have common natures (“universals”) which dictate the purpose of each thing, and which can be known by man. So what did Ockham do that was so wrong? How did the ideas of one Franciscan monk allegedly lead to the dissolution of Christendom? Most recently, in his book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher referred to Ockham as “the theologian who did the most to topple the mighty oak of the medieval model.” But it’s Ockham’s promotion of “nominalism” that has gotten him into trouble with modern intellectual historians of a conservative bent, such as Étienne Gilson, Robert Barron, Brad Gregory, Anthony Esolen, and Rod Dreher.
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