A History of Western Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

  It is said that Occam, on meeting the Emperor, said: “Do you defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen.” At any rate, he and Marsiglio of Padua settled in Munich, under the protection of the Emperor, and there wrote political treatises of considerable importance. What happened to Occam after the Emperor’s death in 1338 is uncertain. Some say he was reconciled to the Church, but this seems to be false.

  The Empire was no longer what it had been in the Hohenstaufen era; and the papacy, though its pretensions had grown continually greater, did not command the same reverence as formerly. Boniface VIII had moved it to Avignon at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the Pope had become a political subordinate of the king of France. The Empire had sunk even more; it could no longer claim even the most shadowy kind of universal dominion, because of the strength of France and England; on the other hand, the Pope, by subservience to the king of France, also weakened his claim to universality in temporal matters. Thus the conflict between Pope and Emperor was really a conflict between France and Germany. England, under Edward III, was at war with France, and therefore in alliance with Germany; this caused England, also, to be antipapal. The Pope’s enemies demanded a General Council—the only ecclesiastical authority which could be regarded as superior to the Pope.

  The character of the opposition to the Pope changed at this time. Instead of being merely in favour of the Emperor, it acquired a democratic tone, particularly in matters of Church government. This gave it a new strength, which ultimately led to the Reformation.

  Dante (1265-1321), though as a poet he was a great innovator, was, as a thinker, somewhat behind the times. His book De Monorchia is Ghibelline in outlook, and would have been more timely a hundred years earlier. He regards Emperor and Pope as independent, and both divinely appointed. In the Divine Comedy, his Satan has three mouths, in which he eternally chews Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius, who are all three equally traitors, the first against Christ, the other two against Caesar. Dante’s thought is interesting, not only in itself, but as that of a layman; but it was not influential, and was hopelessly out of date.

  Marsiglio of Padua (1270-1342), on the contrary, inaugurated the new form of opposition to the Pope, in which the Emperor has mainly a role of decorative dignity. He was a close friend of William of Occam, whose political opinions he influenced. Politically, he is more important than Occam. He holds that the legislator is the majority of the people, and that the majority has the right to punish princes. He applies popular sovereignty also to the Church, and he includes the laity. There are to be local councils of the people, including the laity, who are to elect representatives to General Councils. The General Council alone should have power to excommunicate, and to give authoritative interpretations of Scripture. Thus all believers will have a voice in deciding doctrine. The Church is to have no secular authority; there is to be no excommunication without civil concurrence; and the Pope is to have no special powers.

  Occam did not go quite so far as Marsiglio, but he worked out a completely democratic method of electing the General Council.

  The conciliar movement came to a head in the early fifteenth century, when it was needed to heal the Great Schism. But having accomplished this task, it subsided. Its standpoint, as may be seen already in Marsiglio, was different from that afterwards adopted, in theory, by the Protestants. The Protestants claimed the right of private judgement, and were not willing to submit to a General Council. They held that religious belief is not a matter to be decided by any governmental machinery. Marsiglio, on the contrary, still aims at preserving the unity of the Catholic faith, but wishes this to be done by democratic means, not by the papal absolutism. In practice, most Protestants, when they acquired the government, merely substituted the King for the Pope, and thus secured neither liberty of private judgement nor a democratic method of deciding doctrinal questions. But in their opposition to the Pope they found support in die doctrines of the conciliar movement. Of all the schoolmen, Occam was the one whom Luther preferred. It must be said that a considerable section of Protestants held to the doctrine of private judgement even where the State was Protestant. This was the chief point of difference between Independents and Presbyterians in the English Civil War.

  Occam’s political works* are written in the style of philosophic disputations, with arguments for and against various theses, sometimes not reaching any conclusion. We are accustomed to a more forthright kind of political propaganda, but in his day the form he chose was probably effective.

  A few samples will illustrate his method and outlook.

  There is a long treatise called “Eight Questions Concerning the Power of the Pope.” The first question is whether one man can rightfully be supreme both in Church and State. The second: Is secular authority derived immediately from God or not? Third: Has the Pope the right to grant secular jurisdiction to the Emperor and other princes? Fourth: Does election by the electors give full powers to the German king? Fifth and sixth: What rights does the Church acquire through the right of bishops to anoint kings? Seventh: Is a coronation ceremony valid if performed by the wrong archbishop? Eighth: Does election by the electors give the German king the title of Emperor? All these were, at the time, burning questions of practical politics.

  Another treatise is on the question whether a prince can obtain the goods of the Church without the Pope’s permission. This is concerned to justify Edward III in taxing the clergy for his war with France. It will be remembered that Edward was an ally of the Emperor.

  Then comes a “Consultation on a matrimonial cause,” on the question whether the Emperor was justified in marrying his cousin.

  It will be seen that Occam did his best to deserve the protection of the Emperor’s sword.

  It is time now to turn to Occam’s purely philosophical doctrines. On this subject there is a very good book, The Logic of William of Occam, by Ernest E. Moody. Much of what I shall have to say is based on this book, which takes a somewhat unusual view, but, I think, a correct one. There is a tendency in writers on history of philosophy to interpret men in the light of their successors, but this is generally a mistake. Occam has been regarded as bringing about the breakdown of scholasticism, as a precursor of Descartes or Kant or whoever might be the particular commentator’s favourite among modern philosophers. According to Moody, with whom I agree, all this is a mistake. Occam, he holds, was mainly concerned to restore a pure Aristotle, freed from both Augustinian and Arabic influences. This had also been, to a considerable extent, the aim of Saint Thomas; but the Franciscans, as we have seen, had continued to follow Saint Augustine much more closely than he did. The interpretation of Occam by modern historians, according to Moody, has been vitiated by the desire to find a gradual transition from scholastic to modern philosophy; this has caused people to read modern doctrines into him, when in fact he is only interpreting Aristotle.

  Occam is best known for a maxim which is not to be found in his works, but has acquired the name of “Occam’s razor.” This maxim says: “Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.” Although he did not say this, he said something which has much the same effect, namely: “It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.” That is to say, if everything in some science can be interpreted without assuming this or that hypothetical entity, there is no ground for assuming it. I have myself found this a most fruitful principle in logical analysis.

  In logic, though apparently not in metaphysics, Occam was a nominalist; the nominalists of the fifteenth century* looked upon him as the founder of their school. He thought that Aristotle had been misinterpreted by the Scotists, and that this misinterpretation was due partly to the influence of Augustine, partly to Avicenna, but partly to an earlier cause, Porphyry’s treatise on Aristotle’s Categories. Porphyry in this treatise raised three questions: (1) Are genera and species substances? (2) Are they corporeal or incorporeal? (3) If the latter, are they in sensible things or separated from them? He raised these questions as re
levant to Aristotle’s Categories, and thus led the Middle Ages to interpret the Organon too metaphysically. Aquinas had attempted to undo this error, but it had been reintroduced by Duns Scotus. The result had been that logic and theory of knowledge had become dependent on metaphysics and theology. Occam set to work to separate them again.

  For Occam, logic is an instrument for the philosophy of nature, which can be independent of metaphysics. Logic is the analysis of discursive science; science is about things, but logic is not. Things are individual, but among terms there are universals; logic treats of universals, while science uses them without discussing them. Logic is concerned with terms or concepts, not as psychical states, but as having meaning. “Man is a species” is not a proposition of logic, because it requires a knowledge of man. Logic deals with things fabricated by the mind within itself, which cannot exist except through the existence of reason. A concept is a natural sign, a word is a conventional sign. We must distinguish when we are speaking of the word as a thing, and when we are using it as having meaning, otherwise we may fall into fallacies such as: “Man is a species, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is a species.”

  Terms which point at things are called “terms of first intention”; terms which point at terms are called “terms of second intention.” The terms in science are of first intention; in logic, of second. Metaphysical terms are peculiar in that they signify both things signified by words of first intention and things signified by words of second intention. There are exactly six metaphysical terms: being, thing, something, one, true, good.* These terms have the peculiarity that they can all be predicated of each other. But logic can be pursued independently of them.

  Understanding is of things, not of forms produced by the mind; these are not what is understood, but that by which things are understood. Universals, in logic, are only terms or concepts predicable of many other terms or concepts. Universal, genus, species are terms of second intention, and therefore cannot mean things. But since one and being are convertible, if a universal existed, it would be one, and an individual thing. A universal is merely a sign of many things. As to this, Occam agrees with Aquinas, as against Averroes, Avicenna, and the Augustinians. Both hold that there are only individual things, individual minds, and acts of understanding. Both Aquinas and Occam, it is true, admit the universale ante rem, but only to explain creation; it had to be in the mind of God before He could create. But this belongs to theology, not to the explanation of human knowledge, which is only concerned with the universale post rem. In explaining human knowledge, Occam never allows universals to be things. Socrates is similar to Plato, he says, but not in virtue of a third thing called similarity. Similarity is a term of second intention, and is in the mind. (All this is good.)

  Propositions about future contingents, according to Occam, are not yet either true or false. He makes no attempt to reconcile this view with divine omniscience. Here, as elsewhere, he keeps logic free from metaphysics and theology.

  Some samples of Occam’s discussions may be useful.

  He asks: “Whether that which is known by the understanding first according to a primacy of generation is the individual.”

  Against: The universal is the first and proper object of the understanding.

  For: The object of sense and the object of understanding are the same, but the individual is the first object of sense.

  Accordingly, the meaning of the question must be stated. (Presumably, because both arguments seem strong.)

  He continues: “The thing outside the soul which is not a sign is understood first by such knowledge (i.e., by knowledge which is individual), therefore the individual is known first, since everything outside the soul is individual.”

  He goes on to say that abstract knowledge always presupposes knowledge which is “intuitive” (i.e., of perception), and this is caused by individual things.

  He then ennumerates four doubts which may arise, and proceeds to resolve them.

  He concludes with an affirmative answer to his original question, but adds that “the universal is the first object by primacy of adequation, not by the primacy of generation.”

  The question involved is whether, or how far, perception is the source of knowledge. It will be remembered that Plato, in the Theaetetus, rejects the definition of knowledge as perception. Occam, pretty certainly, did not know the Theaetetus, but if he had he would have disagreed with it.

  To the question “whether the sensitive soul and the intellective soul are really distinct in man,” he answers that they are, though this is hard to prove. One of his arguments is that we may with our appetites desire something which with our understanding we reject; therefore appetite and understanding belong to different subjects. Another argument is that sensations are subjectively in the sensitive soul, but not subjectively in the intellective soul. Again: the sensitive soul is extended and material, while the intellective soul is neither. Four objections are considered, all theological,* but they are answered. The view taken by Occam on this question is not, perhaps, what might be expected. However, he agrees with Saint Thomas and disagrees with Averroes in thinking that each man’s intellect is his own, not something impersonal.

  By insisting on the possibility of studying logic and human knowledge without reference to metaphysics and theology, Occam’s work encouraged scientific research. The Augustinians, he said, erred in first supposing things unintelligible and men unintelligent, and then adding a light from Infinity by which knowledge became possible. He agreed in this with Aquinas, but differed in emphasis, for Aquinas was primarily a theologian, and Occam was, so far as logic is concerned, primarily a secular philosopher.

  His attitude gave confidence to students of particular problems, for instance, his immediate follower Nicholas of Oresme (d. 1382), who investigated planetary theory. This man was, to a certain extent, a precursor of Copernicus; he set forth both the geocentric and the heliocentric theories, and said that each would explain all the facts known in his day, so that there was no way of deciding between them.

  After William of Occam there are no more great scholastics. The next period for great philosophers began in the late Renaissance.

  CHAPTER XV

  The Eclipse of the Papacy

  THE thirteenth century had brought to completion a great synthesis, philosophical, theological, political, and social, which had been slowly built up by the combination of many elements. The first element was pure Greek philosophy, especially the philosophies of Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle. Then came, as a result of Alexander’s conquests, a great influx of oriental beliefs.* These, taking advantage of Orphism and the Mysteries, transformed the outlook of the Greek-speaking world, and ultimately of the Latin-speaking world also. The dying and resurrected god, the sacramental eating of what purported to be the flesh of the god, the second birth into a new life through some ceremony analogous to baptism, came to be part of the theology of large sections of the pagan Roman world. With these was associated an ethic of liberation from bondage to the flesh, which was, at least theoretically, ascetic. From Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia came the institution of a priesthood separated from the lay population, possessed of more or less magical powers, and able to exert considerable political influence. Impressive rituals, largely connected with belief in a life after death, came from the same sources. From Persia, in particular, came a dualism which regarded the world as the battleground of two great hosts, one, which was good, led by Ahura Mazda, the other, which was evil, led by Ahriman. Black magic was the kind that was worked by the help of Ahriman and his followers in the world of spirits. Satan is a development of Ahriman.

  This influx of barbarian ideas and practices was synthesized with certain Hellenic elements in the Neoplatonic philosophy. In Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and some parts of Plato, the Greeks had developed points of view which were easy to combine with those of the Orient, perhaps because they had been borrowed from the East at a much earlier time. With Plotinus and Porphyry the de
velopment of pagan philosophy ends.

  The thought of these men, however, though deeply religious, was not capable, without much transformation, of inspiring a victorious popular religion. Their philosophy was difficult, and could not be generally understood; their way of salvation was too intellectual for the masses. Their conservatism led them to uphold the traditional religion of Greece, which, however, they had to interpret allegorically in order to soften its immoral elements and to reconcile it with their philosophical monotheism. The Greek religion had fallen into decay, being unable to compete with Eastern rituals and theologies. The oracles had become silent, and the priesthood had never formed a powerful distinct caste. The attempt to revive Greek religion had therefore an archaistic character which gave it a certain feebleness and pedantry, especially noticeable in the Emperor Julian. Already in the third century, it could have been foreseen that some Asiatic religion would conquer the Roman world, though at that time there were still several competitors which all seemed to have a chance of victory.

  Christianity combined elements of strength from various sources. From the Jews it accepted a Sacred Book and the doctrine that all religions but one are false and evil; but it avoided the racial exclusiveness of the Jews and the inconveniences of the Mosaic law. Later Judaism had already learnt to believe in the life after death, but the Christians gave a new definiteness to heaven and hell, and to the ways of reaching the one and escaping the other. Easter combined the Jewish Passover with pagan celebrations of the resurrected God. Persian dualism was absorbed, but with a firmer assurance of the ultimate omnipotence of the good principle, and with the addition that the pagan gods were followers of Satan. At first the Christians were not the equals of their adversaries in philosophy or in ritual, but gradually these deficiencies were made good. At first, philosophy was more advanced among the semi-Christian Gnostics than among the orthodox; but from the time of Origen onwards, the Christians developed an adequate philosophy by modification of Neoplatonism. Ritual among the early Christians is a somewhat obscure subject, but at any rate by the time of Saint Ambrose it had become extremely impressive. The power and the separateness of the priesthood were taken from the East, but were gradually strengthened by methods of government, in the Church, which owed much to the practice of the Roman Empire. The Old Testament, the mystery religions, Greek philosophy, and Roman methods of administration were all blended in the Catholic Church, and combined to give it a strength which no earlier social organization had equalled.