Philosophy in Italy

Extract

N. Abbagnano has made a wide and exhaustive study of the philosophy of William of Ockham. He has tried to withstand the tendency, generally prevalent in the history of philosophy, to consider Ockham's personality as balanced between the old scholastic and the modern philosophy, and his works as a strange medley of formal subtleties and of profound intuitions born of genius. He has tried to represent him as a thinker with decided leanings towards the modern era, the initiator not so much of nominalism as of English empiricism, and therefore the precursor of Locke and Hume. To carry out his task he was necessarily obliged to dwell on the more positive and reconstructive part of Ockham's writings, neglecting those parts where the Franciscan doctor hesitates and gropes among the old discussions of scholastic formalism. This tends to spoil the balance of the historical reconstruction; but at the same time it must be granted that the newer and more positive parts revealed by Abbagnano's shrewd analysis have an impressive modern trend, not composed of sporadic ideas and vague anticipations, but forming a coherent and organic whole.