William of Ockham

According to Ockham (Quodl. II q.14, OTh, vol. 9, p. 177), positive morality consists of laws that oblige a person to seek or avoid things only because they have been ordered or prohibited by a superior, but there is a ‘‘non-positive’’ morality consisting of laws that direct human acts apart from any command of a superior. Non-positive morality consists of directives that are either fundamental principles per se nota or laws deduced from such fundamental principles together with experience. (The reference to factual experience differentiates Ockham’s position from that of his predecessors.) Non-positive morality is the natural law (3.2 Dial., 1.5, 1.10).

There are three kinds of natural law (3.2 Dial., 3.6). The first (elsewhere called ‘‘absolute’’ natural law, 3.2 Dial., 1.11) consists of natural laws that hold always, everywhere, in all conditions of mankind; no necessity excuses disobedience (3.1 Dial., 2.20), they are immutable and no dispensation from them can be given (except by God, as we will find): for example, ‘‘Do not commit adultery,’’ ‘‘Do not lie.’’ The second kind are the laws to be observed by those who make no use of custom and human legislation, laws that would have been observed in the state of innocence and would still be observed if everyone lived according to natural reason or divine law: for example, common possession. The third kind are laws gathered by evident reasoning from the law of nations or another law or from some act, divine or human, unless the contrary is decided on with the consent of those concerned. The third kind are natural laws ‘‘on supposition.’’ On the supposition of the fall from innocence, and on the supposition that human law has established the institution of property as a way of reducing conflict and other evils of the fallen state, natural reason will infer that one must not use something belonging to another without the owner’s consent. The law of nations consists in, or includes, natural law of the third kind (3.2 Dial., 3.7 near the end). Ockham’s doctrine of three modes seems to be a development of ideas of Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, and Scotus (see above), and likewise resolves the conflicts found in Gratian’s extracts from Isidore.

Ockham does not follow Scotus in giving a lower status to the second table of the Decalogue, but unlike both Thomas and Scotus, he says that God may make dispensations from any of the Ten Commandments (even commandments of the first table). Ockham seems to hold that one of the principles of non-positive morality is that God is to be obeyed, and that this principle overrides the others when there is conflict. From this it seems that God can make exceptions or give dispensations from any natural law, either by allowing an occasional exception or by replacing the current moral law: ‘‘I say that... hate, theft, adultery and the like... could be done by the wayfarer even meritoriously if they were to fall under a divine precept, just as now in fact their opposites fall under divine precept... But if they were thus done meritoriously by the wayfarer, then they would not be called or named theft, adultery, hate, etc., because those names signify such acts not absolutely but by connoting or giving to understand that one doing such acts is obliged to their opposites by divine precept’’ (OTh, vol. 5, p. 352). To love God, or at least the negative, not to hate God, is a principle ofnatural law; love of God is necessarily a good act and the most basic of good acts. Nevertheless, the natural law that God is to be obeyed overrides even the law that God is to be loved - if God commanded an act of hatred of God, the commandment would bind. “Everything that can be a right act on the way [i. e., on earth], also [can be right] in the fatherland [i. e., in heaven]. But to hate God can be a right act on the way, for example if it is commanded by God, therefore in the fatherland’’ (vol. 7, p. 352).

The overriding force Ockham gives to divine commandments has led some historians to classify him as a ‘‘voluntarist,’’ implying that he holds that morality is whatever God wills it to be (cf. Copleston, vol. 3.1, p. 115ff). In Ockham’s view, the obligation to obey God’s commands is an obligation of natural law that overrides other precepts of natural law, but that it overrides them does not imply that they hold, when they do, only because they are commanded by God. Perhaps his view is that an act contrary to natural law, such as adultery, is wrong in itself but the wrong of disobedience to God would be greater, so that a person might be obliged by divine command to commit adultery, which would then, under the circumstances, be right (see Kilcullen 2001a). Ockham states explicitly (see above) that there is a non-positive morality independent of the will of a superior, and there are places where he distinguishes between things wrong in themselves and things wrong because prohibited (3.1 Dial., 2.20). However, it must be said that Ockham did not make his position clear. (For an account of the role of reason in Ockham’s moral theory see McGrade 2006:6670; on divine command and rational ethics in Ockham’s moral theory, see McGrade 1999.)