Abstract

THIS essay is concerned with two theses about enjoyment to be found in William of Ockham: Enjoyment is a certain kind of love, and Enjoyment is a cause of pleasure, not the same thing as pleasure or an effect of it. Its own thesis is that Ockham’s extensive discussions of such topics in human nature as love, pleasure, and volition, as well as cognition, deserve not only more attention but more varied attention than they typically receive: Ockham can fruitfully be read as a contemporary philosopher of mind, as a pre- and possibly super-Humean founder of behavioral science, and as a committed philosophical theologian ; further, in each of these ways he can well be taken either in the abstract or as a pivotal historical figure in such larger late medieval-early modern movements of thought as involve a conception of what human beings are and what they can or should do. In view of this spread of aspects, one might wish for a unifying definition of Ockham’s own essential philosophical-psychological nature. The present study is not intended to provide such a definition. Its aim, rather, is to present Ockham as a sort of intellectual revolving door between positions, disciplines, and philosophical concerns which are now largely separated, or as a craggy mountain standing between secular or "modern" thought and vast but nebulous ranges of ideas looming in the distance beyond. An affinity for such ideas is not, to be sure, exclusively medieval, yet Ockham’s peculiar position as a defender of traditional spiritual truths and values who at the same time inaugurated an eminently influential via moderna in philosophy and theology suggests that we may find vantage points in his work for insights not easily available elsewhere. Whether we in corporate these into a system like Ockham’s, or a different system, or no system may be less important than seeking the insights in the first place.