ABSTRACT
The terminist logic initiated in the thirteenth century and popularized by William of Ockham in the fourteenth is the crowning achievement of medieval logic. Ockham’s interest in purging language of metaphysical assumptions and reforming language as a device for drawing correct inferences has striking parallels with the logical analysis and linguistic philosophy inspired by the Vienna Circle in the 1930s. The question of the relation between Ockham’s logical writings, especially the formidable Summa, and his later political writings has been posed as a puzzle. The central innovation of the terminists and the one that Ockham develops most completely is the final rejection of the naive view that all elements of language are referential to objects in the world. Ockham’s logic redressed the antimonies generated when this Christian view of divine power was confronted with Aristotelian logic. Claiming loyalty to the spirit of Aristotle, but disagreeing with or interpreting the master when necessary, he reframed Aristotelian essence as uses of language.
