Ockham, William of

Ockham, William of (1285–1349), joined the Franciscans and studied at Oxford where he wrote a Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. In 1324 he was summoned by the pope to Avignon to answer charges of unorthodoxy, and several of his writings were condemned in 1326. In 1328 he fled from Avignon, having taken the side of the Spiritual Franciscans in their dispute with Pope John XXII. Thereafter he remained with the emperor, Louis of Bavaria, concerned with the question of papal power. His importance is as a theologian with a strongly developed interest in logical method, whose approach was critical rather than system-building. The logical axiom associated with him is Ockham's ‘Razor’, that ‘entities (entia) must not be unnecessarily multiplied’, an attack on the postulation of Universals by the Realists. The logical precision of his theory of language has been much admired (and, to some extent, copied) by 20th-cent. theoretical linguists and linguistic philosophers. His importance for literature in the century of Langland lies in his stress on the Augustinian/Franciscan pre-eminence of Faith and the relative relegation of philosophical ‘Reason’, founded on Aristotle.