At the end of the day, it's like water and rain, Sisi ni sawa, we are the same! Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Among those responsible for turning the public square into an increasingly fraught and even violent battleground of competing claim and counter-claim, an early fourteenth century Franciscan friar and philosophy from Surrey makes an unlikely candidate. But the line of thought pioneered by William of Ockham — he of the famous razor — has had an enormous influence down the centuries; and to understand why the present moment feels to many of us like a descent into a certain kind of madness, we need to unpick some very basic philosophical assumptions that he helped to establish.
Ockham’s philosophy is commonly known as nominalism. This position is a kind of suspicion that our most basic categories of things might not have as much in common as our language fools us into believing. We speak of “tables” and “cats” and “clouds”, as if all the very different things that we lump together under these names have some deep common property (or set of properties) by which they get to be counted as a table, or cat or cloud.
Plato, for instance, believed that there is a kind of essence to a thing — he called it a form — that exists independently of the various instantiations of that thing. There is a basic metaphysical form of a table, and that form is the basis for counting each individual example of a table as one.
Ockham’s razor is often regarded as a brilliant intellectual strategy to cut through unnecessary and superfluous explanations — and the universal was one such superfluous explanation. Why posit the existence of some basic link between all things that share the same name; why not just accept that they have no deeper connection with each other than simply that they share the superficial quality of having the same name?
Different tables and different cats and different clouds are all lumped together by human beings as an act of convenience. Nominalism takes its name from this act of naming. It is nothing more than the act of naming that generates the illusion of some deeper connectedness between things. In other words: language really matters. Labels are everything.
Fast forward to today’s disputes. What we are witnessing is the consequences of the collapse of the idea that “human being” represents a basic form of universal solidarity. For centuries, that was the assumption — at least, in theory — that human beings all have something very basic in common, and that on the basis of this, we owe each other a certain kind of moral respect.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeA powerful and profound article that gets to the heart of our current situation.
Spot on. I don’t always agree with Giles Fraser – he wouldn’t be pleased if I did – but this article highlights in his usual uncompromising style and passion for truth the terrible dangers we are in from Nominalism. Certainly injustice must be fought – but that includes the DUTY of all people to hold to integrity in everything. And a world which denies people the right to say what they believe to be true (if it is not legally slanderous), and threatens their lives and livelihoods, is way down the road to denying that duty. Nominalsim leads to Nietsche – and Nazism -YES.
Actually it leads to “Nature red in tooth & claw”.
Nietzsche’s cultural critique is a logical follow on from the state of the philosophical and philological tradition. He was doing low criticism followed by high crit., as any good thinker does, and followed by imaginative thinking of the artist.
Still, as Fraser points out, nominalism leads inexorably to nihilism. That’s why it’s essential in order to defeat nihilism to preserve and advance The Tradition. A Civilization is a construct of language operating on experience in a way to uncover in it a kind of coherence/meaning/idea. Ours began with Homer and the Bible. To “cancel’ culture is equivalent to erasing one’s parentage, …indeed, to “killing God.”
That is exactly what’s happening as our Civilization disintegrates. But Nietzsche wasn’t the cause any more than Fraser is.
So, what grade did you get in Philosophy 100?
Black woman screaming that “White Lives Don’t Matter” gets promoted.
White man flies a banner showing “White Lives Matter” after a murderous terrorist attack in which three men died…..gets sacked….as does his girlfriend.
Apparently you, like the author, are clueless about Scholastic ontological debates.
I’d have more respect for some of the authors on Unherd if they examined openly the Black Lives Matter plan….to let prisoners out, to smash the police and so on.
Suppression of the truth (as in the South African university class) is the mark of totalitarianism
If the opposition to any idea or hypothesis is that “you mustn’t say (or think) that” then you may know without doubt that the proposed idea or hypothesis is correct and a statement of the truth but that the forces of consensus and supporters of the status quo do not wish that truth to be known or accepted.
If such an idea is not the truth then those who oppose it will simply say so and oppose it on the basis of its untruth.
Galileo claimed in the seventeenth century that the Earth orbited round the sun rather than the other way round.
“You mustn’t say that” retorted the Catholic authorities of the day, “We’ll persecute you if you do”. Note that they did not say “you are wrong” because they were not stupid and knew that he wasn’t wrong, their doctrine just didn’t allow them to admit it.
This principle can be applied to any matter of contention in the present day world (for example man made global warming).
Interesting article. I disagree, however, in two respects:
1. The author’s assumption that nominalism is the dominant philosophy in the woke movement, and is so influential that even science is questioned. Maybe the “truth” of science is questioned by students of social sciences – but among people who study and practise engineering, physical and life sciences, medicine, architecture, and so on, no such questioning is going on. This thing is happening within a noisy but very limited bubble of people who take themselves too seriously.
2. The pint about Nietzsche is ineresting because it goes, in my view, to the heart of the matter. That all humans have something deeply in common was an assumption more or less universally held – really? There were doubts about the humanity of blacks and native americans, for example. The notion that some humans are better humans than others was there all the time, and it was sustained by power. Now that the power of the formerly powerful groups is waning, common humanity is rediscovered. The asymmetry was, and is, an asymmetry of power, not of thought.
Concerning your second point: It is certainly true that some people doubted the humanity of blacks and native Americans and probably of many others, but I would guess that those people never doubted that there is a valid category called ‘human beings’ and that these beings have profound things in common. They simply made a distressing and appalling mistake by not including blacks and native americans in the correct category or by putting them into some demeaning sub-category. I would assess the cause to be cultural arrogance rather than power as such, though no doubt the corruption of power was doing its thing in there somewhere. Cultural arrogance is a game we can all play whether we are powerful or not.
So in Pauls writings we see the emergence of a new sense of justice founded on the assumption of moral equality rather than on natural inequality . Justice now speaks to an upright will rather than describing a situation where everything is in its ‘proper’ or fated place. Pauls conception of the Christ exalts the freedom and power of human agency, when rightly directed . In this vision of Jesus, Paul discovered moral reality which enabled him to lay the foundation for a new universal social role.
Larry Siedentop
‘Inventing the individual the origins of western liberalism’ ,Penguin , 2015
I think we have thrown out the baby with the bath water. Christianity established the value of the individual 2000 years ago. The fact that we have rejected this notion does not bode well for us rediscovering ‘common humanity’ simply by discarding institutions
I totally agree Alex. I am an atheist, but recognise that once we move away from believing in a god, we will believe in anything.
Of course in the spirit of Mr. Fraser’s essay, being an atheist (I would say humanist) doesn’t define one as a group. Many humanist believe and practice things that I find inhuman.
Agree. Even among educated people today it’s hard to find ones conversant with the canon of our civilization, …unable to discuss Paul or even SHakespeare.
I had the same reaction to your second point. The author is clearly historically ignorant of human attitudes towards other groups of humans. And he hasn’t a clue to what the medieval ontological debates were about.
I am afraid that I found reading this article left me feeling rather disconnected-which i know was not Giles intention-the opposite in fact- maybe it was due to Ockham’s philosophy which felt really disconnected disembodied in fact, which is interesting given he was a Franciscan friar and generally speaking their way of life was more ‘connected’,
if not in the sense that ‘we’ or some of us- understand it now- many of the medieval scholastics were brilliant intellectually, but emotionally and psychologically disconnected.
Aquinas’s experience of God on his terrace after years writing and philosophizing about God-including the Summa…is one example.
I suppose amidst all the rage and anger and wish to humiliate and shame, which will also have consequences, and the world in a turmoil in every possible way, coming out with words like ‘everything and everyone is connected on the planet in a multitude of unfathomable ways,particularly when it comes to our human lives, past and present- – risks being met with more rage’.
‘ We’ have got ourselves into the most awful and possibly intractable mess in the BLM context-and others- with the media – corporations businesses- universities -politicians, especially of the left
not thinking, just reacting – keen to be seen and heard saying what they think is the right thing, when in fact it is unthinking and crass and stupid (why have we got such poor politicians and media-Just as they have been doing for a long time now on other issues in the context of ‘gender politics’. If we don’t wake up and recognise just how profoundly we are all connected, and to every other living organism then we are all lost.
Is this article not essentially a rejection of postmodernism?
This is still rife amongst too many university disciplines. It’s perhaps unsurprising that graduates of today question basic truths when too many are brainwashed into believing that truth is merely “a perspective” and “relative”.
The obvious trouble is that if you completely remove the possibility any absolutes you have no direction. Like navigating without a reference point – impossible.
Giles Fraser should read and understand a bit more philosophy before opining upon it. He misrepresents nominalism, and non-philosophers would be well advised to read the entry on nominalism in the online Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy rather than rely on this bizarre account.
Further, he confuses ‘is’ with ‘ought’. Nominalism is not a normative account of the ontological status of universals and/or abstract objects (how the world ought to be, with such entities existing), but about how the world actually is (with no universals and/or abstract objects). Whether he likes it or not is irrelevant.
Well spotted. He simply hasn’t a clue as to what the debate between the Nominalists and the Realists was about. He takes some half-remembered statement from a history of philosophy class that he took a quarter of a century ago, then tries to apply it, quite inaptly, it to the subject that he want’s to discuss.
Well Giles. For an old white man like me, who has seen the interactions between us all slide further towards the point we reach today, your summary of this area of thought is useful and shines a light of understanding, or may be lack of understanding.
The Razor is useful in all we do (IMHO). The current problems are fed by power and money. Anyone who feels there is a deeper meaning has lost me. Perhaps I am just not a deep thinker.
Your final paragraph is a killer and self-evident once stated. I was asked recently if I would live my life over again. Absolutely I replied, wonderful parents, wonderful wife, a good career, children and grandchildren I can be proud of. I am always keenly aware from life experience that many do not have such a good life. BUT if you want me to live the next 80 years – No Thank You.
Great article, but very depressing. It’s not the questioning of pre-conceived notions that’s the problem, it’s the intolerance and the blind belief in unquestionably and provably stupid opinions that’s is so bleak.
Did anyone proof read that opening sentence?!
One of the dubious gifts of whizzy digital technology is the disappearance of ‘proof reading.’ The consequences are often regrettable – but at least in this instance it doesn’t impair the argument being made. But it annoys me, as it does you, to have to do one’s own proof-reading on behalf of those whose responsibility it should be to achieve no more than simple correctness.
Yeah agreed – it’s still a decent article, and you get what he means. But it cannot help but diminish the overall effect of a piece if the first sentence is a word soup.
Possibly not but it’s perfectly readable and understandable.
” it dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae”
That is also perfectly readable and understandable, but not really good enough to be published in an online journal/news outlet.
The opening paragraph is terrible. Not only poorly punctuated, which inhibits its meaning, but contains poor grammar. The Franciscan friar and the philosophy (two separate things) are then referred to together as a singular.
Not the end of the world, and a decent article on the whole, but it’s a sloppy start and so distracting from any later arguments he makes.
all we have left is the question of who is strong and who is weak.
Isn’t that at the heart of this current cultural revolution? They don’t really want equality and equal rights for everyone. What they really want is power, and they don’t much care how they get it. They’ll tear down our entire civilization if they think they will be in charge.
Very powerful. Grateful for Unherd in these times. We have a common humanity that we must hold onto.
I think you’re right, Giles. My reading takes me from the Reformation (Louis Bouyer & others argued that Nominalism lay behind the rejection of a spiritual matrix to all things material, leaving only “the Word”) through our “exit from the sacral universe”, to the “masters of suspicion”, Marx, Nietzsche & Freud – & so to deconstruction and “cultural marxism”. Ideas, movements – & revolutions – really do take centuries to gestate. My question would be, is “cultural marxism” an accurate label for the many forms of deconstruction going on at present? Also, I recall George Steiner’s “Real presences” – his protest against the toppling from its plinth of “the Word” itself – leaving, what?
Like so much of this writer’s stuff, it starts off reasonable and with some perceptive comments on the topic. But then the problem so clearly set out is resolved by wheeling God. The problem is even if God does the trick of solving the nominalist problem, that doesn’t prove God exists. At best, it demonstrates that if there were a God, it would solve the problem. But if there were a vaccine for COVID19, it would solve a more pressing current problem. Sadly that fact does not bring a vaccine into exitstence
Sorry to say, but this article leaves me a bit confused and displeased.
Of course, it is an artful and appropriate analysis of a certain philosophical misconception, and as this, it is instructive to read and ponder.
On the other hand, however, it gives not hint towards a solution or a reasonnable reaction to such disorientations.
The reference to universal principles or even the sciences here is in itself double-edged.
As some commentators below have noted correctly, such “universal” principles (God, truth, humanity) are themselves only “ideas” and have not been proven to be immutable over historic periods, and have seen different interpretations.
Obviously, the mathematics seem to be universal and objective, but unfortunately they say nothing about the way we should live and treat one another. And the more the sciences deal with complex reality (physics, chemistry, biology), the more interpretation their findings seem to allow. And moreover, the sciences have developed greatly over the last century, and it would be naive to think that we are already at the finite point of their development, so our current scientific knowledge will be very probably still defective.
A great theoretical burden of our time is, that since Darwin we know that we are all only peculiar mammals, sitting on a branch of the genealogical tree next to apes and monkeys, so it will be hard to derive any special human dignity from biology. (I personally preferred the naive myth of Adam and Eve – sometimes it seems knowing less is better).
Yet, why making such a large detour through philosophy?
The Christians among us, should hold the Ten Commandments and the Christian ethics.
We all should consider and support the Human Rights (
https://www.un.org/en/unive… )
They are imperfect and disputable, as they contain a lot of entitlements, but they are a good attempt to define our common rights.
As a necessary supplement for human rights, there inevitably arise human duties / responsibilities, and a good proposal for their definition / transcription is made here:
https://www.interactioncoun…
These declarations do not solve difficult philosophical questions ( like at which level of mental disease or physical deformity a person may be no longer considered as a full “human”, or at which level of coma a person is no longer considered as being alive ), but they would give a reasonnable way to allow that different opinions can live together peacefully. For there will never be the one and only ideology or science or concept, that can consolidate all the different opinions.
It is up to us all to live up to these values in our daily life! Only by doing so, these values will come to life and hopefully spread.
And as to the many ideologies, it is good to dissect them, but let’s never forget that a great deal of human misbehaviour is finally triggered by the Seven Deadly Sins ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… ), and often enough a certain -ism is only the fig leaf for psychopaths to indulge in their perversion.
My native language isn’t English, and as a Catholic from Central Europe, I know little about the Anglican church, but isn’t the author as a “rector” something akin to a priest? Shouldn’t he then not only give a grim philosophical analysis, but also give a positive impetus?
So, let’s not only look on the dark side of things and freak out. Let us hold on to the good values, for there have always been confusions and there will always be. Life may be seen as a struggle, but it may also be seen as a miracle!
God keep you all!
I don’t know whether this is a philosophical “misconception” or not. I tend to the Quinean view that “to be is to be the value of a bound variable”, but that has no more to do with the things that the author is discussing than do the Scholastic doctrines of Nominalism and Realism. Serious, unanswerable, objections can be raised against both views, as is almost the case with fundamental philosophical debates. Pretending that they have anything to do with popular sociology betrays a complete failure to grasp what the Scholastic debate was about.
Trying to categorise becomes so problematic in the complexity of the real world – this article from NZ sums it up nicely https://www.stuff.co.nz/man…
Good grief. Nominalism is about ontology. What sorts of entities do we have to assume in order to understand the world. I take a Quinean approach to this question, but that’s irrelevant to the points that the author makes because he’s not talking about ontology, he’s talking psychology or sociology. Neither Nominalism not Realism have anything to do with the things that the author is talking about. He really ought not write about things that he does not understand.
The danger, in this divisive storm we are living in, is that people will start to demand a totalitarian leader to cut through the confusion, lawlessness and threat of the mob. Call it ‘conspiracy theory’ but I think it could be the plan.
I have absolutely nothing in common with the racist scum Cambridge University Professor who boldly and openly screams that “White Lives Don’t Matter”.
Marvellous. Thank you, Giles. I thought this sentence sums it all up:
without a sense that we all participate in some basic and common category called “human being” ” the membership of which comes with extensive rights and responsibilities ” then the differences between us can no longer be settled with reference to the obligations we have, one human being to another.
I think it’s absurd to suggest that there is a ‘deep connection’ between all humans or different groups. As an atheist, it is more or less impossible for me to have a ‘deep connection’ with someone who believes in any form of God. As someone raised in a democracy who has absorbed most of the western canon I probably have no real connection with someone who has lived all their life in China. As someone who believes, broadly, in personal responsibility it is impossible for me to have any ‘deep connection’ with, for instance, someone who votes for the Labour Party of the last few decades. And so it goes on, the problem being that we have now thrown together people with entirely different, and often irreconcilable, value systems into the same countries and cities.
I am not someone who hangs on every word that Jordan Peterson says, but when asked if multiculturalism can work he replied ‘No, that’s why we have wars’. And I think there’s a lot in that statement.
I’m a JBP fan myself. but I find what you write here profoundly sad. I believe we choose whether to focus on the things that divide us or on those that we have in common. We are all just waves rising up for a moment and then sinking back into the generality of the ocean that is life. That’s the one thing we undeniably have in common. We are alive and we will eventually die and be forgotten. We also have in common joy and disappointment, failure and success, doubt, fear, love, pain and death, and the birth of children and grandchildren. Human beings are so much more than their political or philosophical views. And those views are usually founded in some personal, psychological need. When you take the trouble to discover and understand why a person needs to think what they do, then I find that you understand them better and by understanding and accepting them, you cannot help but feel what you have in common with them. That does often mean putting your own views and therefore your own ego on the back seat, though. You take the trouble to mention that you are an atheist and that you could not have anything in common with someone who believes in “God”. I wonder why your atheism is so important to you that you need to use it as sword and shield to ward off believers. Personally I am neither a believer in the traditional concept of “God” nor an atheist. I suspect there is so much more that my limited human mind will never be able to know. But I would call myself a Christian nonetheless, because of the beauty of Christ’s commandment that we love our neighbour as ourself. We could heal a lot of this if we just remembered that commandment.
In addition to which, this “deep connection” or lack thereof, has absolutely nothing to do with Scholastic ontological disputes.