School of thought

Medieval Nominalism

Intellectual current

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Classification

Period
c. 1080-1400 CE
Regions
europe
Domains
Philosophy of Language , Metaphysics

Overview

Nominalism denies the real existence of universals — 'humanity,' 'redness,' 'justice' are not things in the world but names (nomina) we apply to groups of similar particulars. William of Ockham, its most influential proponent, argued that plurality should not be posited without necessity, and used that principle of parsimony to strip away the elaborate metaphysical structures of Scholastic Realism. The familiar wording 'entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity' is a later scholastic formulation rather than Ockham's own.

Key ideas

  • Ockham's Razor: plurality is not to be posited without necessity. The simplest explanation sufficient to account for the facts is to be preferred. A powerful principle of parsimony, named after Ockham but given its familiar Latin wording by later scholastics.
  • Rejection of Universals: Only individual, particular things exist. 'Humanity' is not a thing shared by all humans but a term we use to group similar individuals — universals are in the mind, not in reality.
  • Ockham on Divine Will: Ockham paired his nominalism with a strong voluntarism: no eternal natures stand over God's will, so an act is obligatory because God commands it and God could have commanded otherwise. The two commitments reinforce each other in his work, but neither entails the other — Buridan was a nominalist who did not follow him here.

Key figures

Roscelin · William of Ockham · John Buridan · Adam Wodeham

Positions held

  • Nominalism

    Question scope: The Problem of Universals

Reacts to

Later connections

  • British Empiricism Influenced by this tradition

    Inherited the nominalist rejection of real universals and its restriction of knowledge to particular things, which empiricism recast as knowledge grounded in particular sense experience.

References