Holly Hamilton-Bleakley

The connection between William of Ockham's philosophy and his politics has long been a subject of debate among scholars. Many have seen his nominalist epistemology, which asserts that the individual thing is the object of knowledge, as contributing towards his focus on the individual in his political thought. In her most recent article, ‘Ockham’s Right Reason and the Genesis of the Political as „Absolutist”’, Janet Coleman supports this argument concerning the influence of Ockham's philosophical individualism upon his political individualism. But she also provides a different and, I believe, more important argument as to how Ockham's philosophical epistemology is connected to his politics: that what man can know about himself and others through right reason is Ockham's starting point for analysing human authority. This article attempts to support Coleman's argument that the role of right reason in the life of the individual has significant consequences for Ockham's notion of political rule. This is done through a detailed analysis of the specific role of right reason in Ockham's theory of the virtuous act, and how this treatment of right reason can be said to influence Ockham's notion of the purpose and methodology of political rule. Specifically, Ockham's notion of right reason in his ethical theory plays out in his political theory by defining the limitations of political knowledge, and thereby creating a pronounced discontinuity between the function of the individual as a self-ruler and the function of the political ruler

The juxtaposition between scholasticism and humanism is a commonplace in the scholarship of medieval political thought. Several scholars have argued that scholastic political theory is concerned with the institutional arrangements necessary for the well being of the city, while humanist political theory focuses on the role of the ruler in bringing about this well being. This paper argues that by looking at a much neglected text of the major scholastic figure St Thomas Aquinas, the De Regimine Principum, it can be shown that he, like the humanists of his era, affords the ruler a central place in his political theory. Aquinas' adaptation of Aristotelian teleology, however, differentiates his theory from humanist political theory, allowing him to create the concept of a ‘scholastic ruler'. Specifically, Aquinas portrays the ruler as an artist, assigning him the roles of making the city, and making virtuous subjects