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William of Ockham's Divine Command Theory University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School March 2019 William of Ockham's Divine Command Theory Matthew Dee University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Scholar Commons Citation Dee, Matthew, "William of Ockham's Divine Command Theory" (2019). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7776 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. William of Ockham’s Divine Command Theory by Matthew Dee A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Thomas Williams, Ph.D. Roger Ariew, Ph.D. Colin Heydt, Ph.D. Mor Segev, Ph.D. Date of Approval: March 18, 2019 Keywords: Medieval Philosophy, Ockham, Divine Command Theory, Voluntarism Copyright © 2019, Matthew Dee Dedication To the wife of my youth, who patiently postponed her calling and endlessly encouraged me to chase mine. And to God, the source of all wisdom. "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding." Proverbs 4:7 Soli Deo Glori Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee members – Roger Ariew, Colin Heydt, Mor Segev, and Thomas Williams – for their guidance and instruction during my time at the University of South Florida. I am particularly grateful to Thomas Williams, whose meticulous and timely revisions have made this project far better than I could have produced on my own. I would also like to thank my former professors, Paul Boling, for introducing me to philosophy, and Dave Horner, for introducing me to medieval ethics. Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ...................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Ockham's Account of Prudence .........................................................................9 Prudence Distinguished from Right Reason ...............................................................11 Prudence Distinguished from Craft .............................................................................21 Prudence Distinguished from Moral Science .............................................................25 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................42 Chapter Two: Ockham's Account of an Act of Will and God's Concurring with the Act ...........................................................................................................................................43 God Coincides with Virtuous Action ...........................................................................43 One Worry ............................................................................................................45 Two Clarifications ...............................................................................................48 God's Absolute Power and God's Ordained Power ......................................50 An Act of Will ..................................................................................................................54 The Scholastics on Freedom ..............................................................................55 Ockham's Voluntarism .......................................................................................58 Acts of Will Alone Are Virtuous .......................................................................64 Necessarily and Intrinsically Virtuous Action ................................................65 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................79 Chapter Three: Loving God Isn't Fundamental for Ockham's Ethics .................................82 The Misunderstood Statement and Properly Understanding It ..............................85 King and Freppert's Errors ............................................................................................91 King's First Error .................................................................................................91 Freppert's Errors Concerning Rep 2.15 and Rep 4.16 ....................................94 King's Second Error ..........................................................................................100 Freppert's Objection ......................................................................................................102 Rebutting Freppert's Objection ...................................................................................104 Four Reasons ......................................................................................................105 The Objection and Ockham's Response .........................................................107 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................113 Chapter Four: Against Adams: Right Reason is Derivative, Divine Commands are Fundamental ........................................................................................................................115 i Ockham's Positive/Non-Positive Distinction is an Epistemological Distinction ................................................................................................................120 Ockham Characterizes Right Reason as a Norm Derived from the Fundamental Norm of Divine Commands, but not Vice Versa ...............................................129 Right Reason is a Norm of Morality ...............................................................130 Right Reason as Derivative, Divine Commands as Fundamental .............136 Ockham Never Characterizes Right Reason as Fundamental nor Divine Commands as Derivative .......................................................................................143 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................147 References ..................................................................................................................................149 ii Abstract There was a long-standing consensus that Ockham was a Divine Command Theorist - one who holds that all of morality is ultimately grounded in God's commands. But contrary to this long-standing consensus, three arguments have recently surfaced that Ockham is not a divine command theorist. The thesis of this dissertation is that, contrary to these three arguments, Ockham is a divine command theorist. The first half of the dissertation is an analysis of the three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for virtuous action, whereas the second half is a response to the three contemporary arguments that Ockham isn't a divine command theorist. In a way, the first half of the dissertation gives a prima facie case that Ockham is a divine command theorist; the second half concludes so ultima facie. iii Introduction There was a long-standing consensus that William of Ockham (1285-1347) was a Divine Command Theorist – one who holds that all of morality is ultimately grounded in God’s commands.1 For example, Maurice De Wulf, near the start of the twentieth century, describes the will of God, for Ockham, as “the sovereign arbiter of moral good and evil.”2 Around the same time Otto von Gierke contrasts two medieval views of natural law – Realist and Nominalist – describing Aquinas as the former and Ockham as the latter, saying the Realists “explained the Lex Naturalis as an intellectual act independent of will – as a mere lex indicativa, in which God was not lawgiver but a teacher working by means of Reason….The opposite proposition, proceeding from pure Nominalism, saw in the Law of Nature a mere divine command, which was right and binding merely because God was the lawgiver.”3 1 Concerning the definition of Divine Command Theory, Janine Marie Itziak says “a ‘divine command moralist’ is one who maintains that the content of morality…is directly and solely dependent upon the commands and prohibitions of God” (Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings [New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979], 1). Marilyn McCord Adams similarly defines divine command theory as the view “according to which moral norms are entirely a function of the arbitrary choices of the free will of an omnipotent God” (“The Structure of Ockham’s Moral Theory” Franciscan Studies 46 (1986): 1-35, here 1). 2 Maurice De Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, trans P. Coffey (Longmans, Green, and Co, 1909), 425. 3 Otto von Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, trans Maitland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), 173, n. 256. 1 Similar descriptions of Ockham as a divine command theorist continued well into the middle of the 20th century. Armand Maurer contrasts the metaphysical foundations of Aquinas’s ethics with the separation of metaphysics from ethics in Ockham’s divine command theory: The scholastics prior to Ockham looked
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