Ockham’s so-called nominalism consists of two distinct, but closely related, projects: namely, (1) securing a reductionist ontology, and (2) developing a nominalist semantics. Ockham’s commentators have long supposed that Ockham’s ontological reductionism is achieved through the development and deployment of his nominalist semantics. In this chapter, I challenge this traditional, ‘semantics-first,’ understanding of Ockham’s nominalism. In particular, I argue that a careful reading of Ockham’s elaborate treatment of terms in SL I shows that his semantics presupposes rather than establishes his reductionist ontology. Thus, far from being a semantics-first project in ontology, Ockham’s treatment of key semantic principles and distinctions in SL I reads much more like an ontology-first project in semantics. Having thus dispatched the semantics-first reading of Ockham’s nominalism, I conclude by sketching an alternative account of the principles that guide Ockham’s metaphysical methodology.

I first present a model of Ockham’s semantics that puts modality front and center (it is a presheaf semantics over a branching timeline). I then show what kinds of statements about language Ockham’s semantics supports. Finally, I discuss how Ockham’s semantics fares in light of Tarski’s and Montague’s paradoxes.

Aquinas recognizes a number of wildly different kinds of individual happiness. What fundamentally unifies these various kinds of happiness so that they all count as varieties of happiness to begin with? This chapter gives a novel answer to this question and thereby identifies a new heart of happiness in Aquinas, which the author calls the Enjoying Good Activities Reading. On that reading, in every case, happiness is exclusively constituted by engaging in and enjoying a genuinely good activity. After giving a brief textual case in favor of reading Aquinas this way, the bulk of this chapter explains Aquinas’s understanding of enjoyment and his account of what it takes for an activity to be genuinely good. This makes clearer what this new reading amounts to and reveals something of its philosophical interest.

The introduction explains the nature of the study, its motivation, its basic structure, and its organization. It draws special attention to the way the book offers a novel interpretation of Aquinas’s account of individual happiness that is remarkably interesting philosophically. It also emphasizes the roles of individual happiness, common happiness, and Holistic Eudaimonism in Aquinas’s efforts to produce a unified ethical system in which law, virtue, and grace also have an important place.

This chapter examines the sort of happiness Aquinas thinks we can have on earth without any special divine help, namely, natural imperfect happiness. After establishing the varieties of natural imperfect happiness Aquinas accepts, it argues that, according to Aquinas, happiness is constituted exclusively by engaging in and enjoying those genuinely good activities that are made possible through the purely natural development of one’s powers. This is the Enjoying Good Activities Reading as applied to ordinary earthly happiness. The chapter then explains the various roles that everyday goods play in happiness so understood. Because of the role those goods play, it turns out that this sort of happiness is somewhat fragile. After giving an account of just how fragile it is, the chapter ends by considering Aquinas’s understanding of degrees of natural imperfect happiness.

Because the full reconstruction emerges piecemeal over the course of the study, this chapter starts by summarizing the most fundamental ways in which Aquinas connects the big-picture elements of his ethics through his understanding of happiness, both individual and common. The chapter then offers reasons for thinking that Aquinas’s ethics of happiness is still worth taking seriously today. In particular, it focuses on three illustrative aspects that make Aquinas’s ethical views distinctive and appealing. The first is Aquinas’s account of the nature of happiness and how that account fits into his broader understanding of well-being. The second is Aquinas’s account of the relationship between the right and the good. The third is Aquinas’s account of the most comprehensive role that virtue plays in ethics and human life.

Aquinas recognizes a number of wildly different kinds of individual happiness. What fundamentally unifies these various kinds of happiness so that they all count as varieties of happiness to begin with? This chapter starts to answer this question and thereby starts to home in on the true heart of happiness in Aquinas. Because perfectionism was predominant in Aquinas’s time, the chapter starts by laying out three importantly different varieties of perfectionism about happiness. It turns out that different commentators have treated each of those three varieties of perfectionism as the version that Aquinas endorses. So this chapter predominately explains and evaluates each of these three readings of Aquinas, while also drawing out lessons to be incorporated into any adequate novel account of the heart of happiness in Aquinas.

This chapter examines the sort of happiness Aquinas thinks we can have on earth with the help of God’s grace, namely, graced imperfect happiness. In keeping with the Enjoying Good Activities Reading, it argues that, according to Aquinas, happiness is constituted exclusively by engaging in and enjoying some suboptimal genuinely good activity, animated by God’s grace. After introducing Aquinas’s understanding of grace, the chapter works through Aquinas’s reflections on the Fruit of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes. From those reflections, it becomes clear both how Aquinas thinks about graced imperfect happiness generally and how he thinks about its basic varieties. The chapter closes by reflecting on graced imperfect happiness’s place between the perfect happiness of heaven and the natural imperfect happiness of those on earth living apart from God’s grace.

This chapter explains the many ways in which individual happiness and common happiness are related to Aquinas’s account of virtue. It begins by arguing that virtue is strictly necessary in order for an individual to be happy, but still virtue is not a constitutive part of that happiness. Rather, it is strictly necessary because virtue alone enables the individual to engage in and enjoy genuinely good activities. The chapter then argues that, still, according to Aquinas, virtue is more deeply related to common happiness than individual happiness inasmuch as a character trait is a virtue of character fundamentally because it enables a person to play their part in realizing the common happiness of their community, not their own individual happiness. The chapter thereby establishes the third element of Aquinas’s Holistic Eudaimonism. The remainder of the chapter shows how the master virtues of general justice and charity as well as a whole host of other particular virtues concern aiming at and securing common happiness for the community.