SOURCE: An introduction to Ockham: Philosophical Writings, edited by Philotheus Boehner, Thomas Nelson, 1957, pp. xvi-xxix.

In the following excerpt, Boehner summarizes the guiding principles used in Ockham's writings and explains some of his terminology.

Gi; … Iii. Ockham's Philosophy =~ S… Iii. Ockham's Philosophy

Before drawing the broad outlines of Ockham's philosophy, we must remind the reader that Ockham never expounded it systematically and in its entirety. The Cursus philosophicus in several ponderous tomes is a characteristic product of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholasticism, but no scholastic philosopher of the thirteenth or the fourteenth century has handed down to us anything like that. The scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were theologians essentially, philosophers only incidentally. Their reasoning was a concentrated effort to penetrate the mysteries of the Christian faith; their philosophy was the handmaid of theology. None the less, it is a striking historical fact that these great theologians...