William Ockham's Theory of the Foundations of Ethics

The aim of this study is to analyse the structure of William Ockham’s theory of ethics as it can be found in his theological and philosophical writings. The study consists of three chapters. The first one gives a general idea of Ockham’s philosophical anthropology and concludes that Ockham’s voluntaristic conception of the will as a source of free choice is essential in view of his ethics. The second chapter treats Ockham’s conception of practical knowledge. It shows that knowledge has no other final cause than the one a knower himself intends. A further inquiry concerns Ockham’s distinction between ostensively practical and dictatively practical knowledge. The distinction turns out to be very similar to Kant’s distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. It becomes obvious that ethics diverges from the other practical sciences; ethics, like the categorical imperative, directs human action without conditions. The third chapter consists basically of a semantic and a material part. The former concerns the different uses of the term ‘virtuous’. The deontological structure of Ockham’s ethics can be found in the theory according to which the term is predicated of acts of will, some of which are intrinsically and some extrinsically virtuous. A detailed analysis shows how Ockham specifies a basic intrinsically virtuous act which is an act of willing to fulfil moral law qua moral law and how all other acts may be called virtuous through a denominative predication. The first discussion in the latter part deals with the criteria for the moral goodness of an act of will. The subsequent discussion pertains to Ockham’s conception of the foundations of ethics. Morally good action is to fulfil moral obligation. This is a conceptual and necessary truth. Actual moral obligations are introduced by God as a moral authority. Christians should understand divine precepts as a Divine Command ethics. Non-Christians may understand morality as consisting in naturally valid precepts, but in fact they recognize moral obligations through conscience or right reason only because God has made the conscience to recognize them. This is a divine command interpretation of natural morality.