## 1. Biography


### 1.1 Ramus' background and studies



Our information about Ramus' life, apart from scattered
biographical notes in his own books, comes mainly from three of his
contemporaries: Johannes Thomas Freigius, Theophilus Banosius and
Nicolas Nancelius. Freigius and Banosius spent only brief periods with
Ramus and relied mostly on written sources. Banosius met Ramus once in
Heidelberg in 1569, and Fregius' time together with Ramus was
limited to the latter's stay in Basel in
1569-1570. Nancelius, however, was a close friend of his, first
as a student and later as a colleague and collaborator; and the
account he produced is more exhaustive and better written.



Ramus was born in 1515 to a poor but, according to him, illustrious
family who lived in a small village in Picardy not far from Noyon, the
birthplace of his contemporary, John Calvin (1509-1564). For
some time his father even had to earn his living as a charcoal-burner.
Later Ramus' enemies would ridicule his humble parentage.
According to Skalnik, however, we should consider Ramus'
doctrine and his pedagogical program in the light of these
circumstances. After losing his father as a young boy, Ramus worked
for a short time as a foot-soldier and a servant before he got the
opportunity to study in Paris, becoming a Master of Arts in 1536.
Nancelius praises his diligence and tells us that he earned his living
by helping other students of greater means and consequently slept
hardly more than three hours a night, resulting in a painful eye
disease (Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*: 178). The lengthy
curriculum of the University of Paris was mostly governed by the
demands of the Church and strongly influenced by a scholastic
tradition dating from the late Middle Ages. In 1529 Francis I had
established several royal professorships and had also
set up a special college with a more humanist curriculum, the
College royal (later known as the College de France), in
order to reduce the power of the university.



Our knowledge of Ramus' precise whereabouts and activities
during these first years in Paris is quite limited; but it is likely
that early on he began to criticize the role of scholasticism in
university education. He claimed that he had reacted from the very
beginning against the inconsistencies of the curriculum and of the
teaching. As soon as he was allowed to give lectures, he tried to
change what he himself had found so unsatisfactory. His endeavors to
reform the curriculum were not, however, appreciated by his
colleagues, who mounted strong resistance to them: his first
textbooks, *Aristotelicae animadversiones* and *Dialecticae
institutiones*, both published in 1543, were censured and
eventually prohibited. He himself was briefly banned from teaching
logic and rhetoric.


### 1.2 *Regius* professor



The tension between Ramus and the university did not abate. In 1551,
however, he was appointed to a *regius* (royal) professorship in eloquence and
philosophy. Holders of these chairs taught according to more humanist
principles than those followed by university professors. The latter,
for instance, strenuously defended the medieval rules for pronouncing
Latin and Greek, which Ramus ridiculed, just as he derided those who
tried to develop a formal logic that departed from the normal way in
which people talk and write. Importantly the royal professorships were
separated from the university and without any rules governing lectures
or other duties, so the holders had a significant degree of
independence. Still more important were Ramus' insistent
endeavors to reform the university. Among other things he suggested
that the professors should be paid from public funds rather than by
the students. Skalnik has emphasized the significance of Ramus'
program and dream of widening the scope of education to include even instruction
of future craftsmen. Ramus argued unrelentingly in favor of a kind of
meritocracy that implied selecting officials and professors on the
basis of merits rather than lineage (Skalnik 2002: 41, 64 and
157).



Ramus published many books during his career. More than fifty were
printed, and some came out in several editions. They vary in genre and
length from commentaries on classical texts to short tracts or
orations. His textbooks were widely read, but how the rules actually
should be used is more clearly displayed in his commentaries. It is
sometimes difficult to distinguish Ramus' works from those of
his closest colleague and friend, Omar Talon (c. 1510-1562). The
two scholars influenced each other and exchanged ideas and texts.
Talon's *Rhetorica* (1548), for example, was essentially
a slightly revised version of Ramus' *Institutiones
oratoriae* (1545). Nancelius describes an episode typical of this
intricate friendship. Ramus, attacked by a colleague, took only three
days to produce a witty reply, which was printed a few days later with
Talon's name on the title-page, though the latter had barely
seen the manuscript (Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*:
219-221). It was a great loss for Ramus when Talon died in
1562.



In 1561 Ramus took the dramatic step of converting to
Protestantism. As a Huguenot, he lost the influential support of the
Cardinal of Lorraine, which until then had been vital for his career
advancement. From now on he could only hope for the patronage of the
king. He was forced to leave Paris and the university, spending some
years in Germany and Switzerland. He tried to obtain a chair in
Heidelberg, where he took part in his first Protestant communion;
despite this, the other professors refused him the chair that had been
promised to him by the Count Palatine, Fredrick III. His attempt to be
appointed to a chair in Strasbourg was also unsuccessful. Therefore,
in 1570 he returned to Paris, where he took up his former position as
royal professor, but without regaining his *licentia docendi*,
his right to teach at the university. This meant that he was no longer
permitted to deliver lectures and therefore was unable to attract
large audiences (Banosius 1577: 33; cf. Ong 1958: 28). Ramus remained
controversial also among his Reformed brethren. He sided with a
minority that argued for a congregational leadership against a
Presbyterian polity. In this debate Ramus adamantly defied Theodore
Beza, who had succeeded Calvin in Geneva as leader of the Reformed
Church. Beza was upset and even threatened Ramus with excommunication
(Skalnik 2002: 88-147; Hotson 2007: 19).


### 1.3 Ramus' death and personality



Ramus was an extremely controversial figure. He acquired admirers and
friends as easily as he did opponents, critics and enemies--one
of whom, according to an unreliable report, was responsible for his
death. In spite of the differing accounts given by his biographers, we
know that Ramus was murdered during the St. Bartholomew's day
massacre, which started on August 24, 1572. On the third day he was
captured in his study at the College de Presles. His body was
mutilated and perhaps decapitated before being thrown into the Seine.
Although the king had ordered for him to be spared, we do not know why
these instructions were disobeyed. Since, however, Ramus was not
killed until the slaughter had almost died down, this may indicate
that the reasons for his murder went beyond his conversion to
Protestantism. At any rate, he became a kind of martyr to his many
followers.



Nancelius, in order to present an accurate portrait of Ramus, provides
some details about his way of life and his personality. He tells us
that Ramus was as dark-skinned as an Italian or a Spaniard, rather
tall and had an impressively black and bushy beard, of which he was
very proud--once when the rector of the University of Paris
ordered all professors to shave, Ramus obeyed but stayed at home until
his beard had grown out again. His gait was graceful and regal, his
posture striking and dignified. He seems to have been quite moderate
in his drinking and eating habits. He spent most of his time reading,
writing and talking with friends. Nancelius also reports that Ramus
took a bath only once a year, but washed his hands, face and beard
daily in a mixture of water and white wine. Although as a professor he
was not allowed to marry, he did from time to time have female
friends.



Ramus is reputed to have had a very bad temper. Sometimes he even
physically attacked his young students, though apparently this did not
prevent him from gaining many devoted disciples. He amassed a
substantial fortune and made a provision in his will that this money
should be used to establish a chair of mathematics. Significantly, it
was not to be attached to the University of Paris but was instead to
have the same type of special conditions granted to royal
professors.


### 1.4 Ramus' works



Ramus often shifted his opinions and constantly made quite substantial
changes in his textbooks; sometimes he also reconsidered his views on
important part of his writings, although he always stuck to the core
of his program. During Ramus' early years at the University of
Paris he devoted himself to the disciplines or arts of the traditional
*trivium*: grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. He formulated his
ideas on logic in 1540s and the early 1550s, and it is during this
period that he gave most explicit expression to his
anti-Aristotelianism. In 1555 he published a logic textbook in French,
entitled *Dialectique*, which in many ways provided a clear
indication of his ambitions and aims. Although he had become well
known for his Latin eloquence, he broke with the scholastic tradition
by writing in the vernacular. The following year he published the same
book in Latin under the title *Dialecticae libri duo*
(henceforth *Dialectica*). It was later printed in many
different languages, and hundreds of editions of the Latin version
were published. The book was widely disseminated and used at schools
and universities throughout Europe, mostly in the Protestant
countries.



Ramus' rhetoric textbook, the *Institutiones rhetoricae*,
written with Talon, appeared in 1545 but with only Talon's name
on the title-page. It was a kind of companion to the *Dialecticae
institutiones*, published two years earlier. A second edition,
entitled *Rhetorica*, though popular and frequently reprinted
in new editions, never attained the diffusion and influence of his
logic textbook. During the late 1550s and the 1560s Ramus published
his lectures on the various arts, including physics and metaphysics.
While his textbooks were succinctly organized according to very strict
principles, the lectures (*Scholae*) were less laconic and
offered more detailed discussion. They were later collected together
and published as *Scholae in liberales artes* in a Basel
edition of 1569.



Ramus also turned his hand to mathematics, although his knowledge of
the subject was limited. He had problems at first understanding the
Greek mathematicians, and later he recalled his early encounter with
them: 



> 
> 
> ...I threw away my drawing-board and ruler, and burst out in rage
> against mathematics, because it tortures so cruelly those who love it
> and are eager for it. (Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*: 205) 
> 
> 
> 



According to Nancelius, Ramus used to gather around him in his own
house a number of proficient mathematicians, so that they could help
him to understand what he would later teach his students. Yet, from
the very beginning, he was convinced of the importance of mathematics.
Nancelius thinks his master's keen interest in mathematics was a
consequence of his banishment for some time from teaching philosophy
(Ramus, *Collectaneae praefationes, epistolae, orationes*, p.
409; Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*: 197-201; Goulding 2006:
74, 2010: 20). In any case, he improved his abilities in both Greek
and mathematics, and in his will he stipulated that the holder of the
chair he wanted to endow should be an expert in both. Ong's
negative judgment of Ramus' mathematical abilities may be
correct (Ong 1958: 27); nevertheless, his enthusiasm for this field
was crucial to the future history of Ramism.



Whatever Ramus' own mathematical abilities may have been, he
consistently demonstrated his conviction of its importance. He was
confident that there was a natural way to think and argue and also to
calculate. Arts should therefore always be built of parts that
represent this true nature. Mathematics should mirror a natural
mathematical thinking. We will see below how significant this thought
was for Ramus when he worked out his syllabus and his method.



Ramus addressed the challenge of his weak knowledge of mathematics not
only by improving his ability but also by grasping its history. It
became essential for him not only to distinguish those who in the past
had contributed to make mathematics an art but also those who in
different ways had tried to undermine it. In his early writings, he
seems mostly to have been focused on the natural aspects of
mathematics and looked on it as an expression of natural dialectic;
but later on he turned his attention more to the practical or useful
aspects of mathematics. Goulding has explained this development in
detail, outlining how Ramus' evaluation of Pythagoras evolved
over time, until he eventually became more and more like Ramus
himself. He even condemned the way Euclid had, in his view, destroyed
what was natural in mathematics and instead filled it with subtleties.
In the *Prooemium mathematicum* (1667) and later in *Scholae
mathematicae*, he criticized the theoretical works of the ancient
Greek mathematicians on the grounds that they were confusing and led
away from the usefulness of the discipline for practitioners. He
wanted "an art at once practical and methodical". As
Goulding points out, if the holder of his endowed chair of mathematics
was to be in a position to observe the provisions of his will, he
would have to be made in Ramus' own image (Goulding 2010: 35f.,
50 and 180).



Thus, while the early phase of Ramus' academic career was
concentrated on the disciplines of the *trivium*, in the later
period, from around 1560, he moved on to the *quadrivium*
(arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy), though in practice his
interest was largely restricted to mathematics. He could never fully
endorse Copernicus' new heliocentric astronomy because he was
unable to accept an hypothesis as a scientific argument (see
 SS2.4
 below). The famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
left a report of an encounter he had with Ramus in Augsburg in 1569,
registering his own amazement at this attitude. It was Brahe's
view that, according to Ramus, the astronomer's task in
describing the movements of the planets must be based solely on
observation: he was not allowed to use hypotheses such as assuming a
circular planetary movement. Ramus even promised to let anyone who
could create an astronomy without hypotheses take over his own royal
chair. Of course, no one seriously claimed to have succeeded until
Kepler in 1597 mockingly declared himself entitled to it (Skalnik
2002: 59; Hooykaas 1958: 64-67; Jardine & Segonds 2001).



Although Ramus challenged the values and educational principles of
scholasticism, he never attempted to discuss theological issues. His
sole interest was in reforming the curriculum of the arts faculty.
Nancelius points out that Ramus' large library had very few
volumes on theology, medicine or law (Nancelius *Petri Rami
Vita*: 273). Nevertheless, during his final years he wrote a book
on Christian theology, the *Commentariorum de religione Christiana
libri quatuor*, which was published posthumously. The most
striking feature of this work was that Ramus defined theology as the
art of living virtuously, *ars bene vivendi*, adopting an
essentially Zwinglian point of view. Theology may give us the rules by
means of which we can and must live, but it cannot bring us salvation.
In a particularly interesting chapter of the treatise (I:8), Ramus
discusses the meaning of predestination. Mostly he sided with a
Zwinglian against a Genevan position, as he did in the sacramental
theology.



Banosius mentions that several of Ramus' manuscripts were
destroyed or scattered at the time of his murder and that among these
were a commentary on Aristotle's *Politics* and various
works on ethics and music (Banosius 1577: 39). Unfortunately, no trace
of these writings has survived. Nancelius was eager to mention that he
had collaborated with Ramus in planning a long series of works on
mathematics. For some reason, however, this *corpus
mathematicum* was never printed and, along with many other
manuscripts, these works disappeared after Ramus' assassination
(Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*: 205 and 273 ).


## 2. Ramist philosophy


### 2.1 Historical context



The enormous impact of Ramus on European education in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries has seemed astonishing to some modern
scholars; and among his harshest critics have been historians of
logic. Carl Prantl, for instance, claimed that Ramus had no talent
whatsoever for philosophy and logic (Prantl 1855-1870:
157-169; cf. Kneale and Kneale 1962: 300-302); and Walter
J. Ong was also keen to point out his incompetence (Ong 1958: 7 and
24). Without engaging in arguments with these scholars, it is still
legitimate to ask what it was that made Ramus so popular and so
controversial. One key to understanding the impact of Ramism can be
found in his own statement, in the *Scholae dialecticae*, that
the aim of his reforms was to adapt Aristotle's *Organon*
to the service of learning, *ad eruditionis usum*.



The arts faculty was supposed to prepare young students for further
studies in theology, medicine or jurisprudence. Most students,
however, never advanced to these higher faculties but left the
university for employment in the Church. The arts curriculum had been
geared toward this situation since the Middle Ages. The political
developments which led to the rise of a new kind of state in the
Renaissance also affected the educational program of universities. In
the short term, rulers tried to find quick and practical solutions
such as special colleges or special professorships; but in the long
run, more thorough measures, which included establishing new
institutions and devising new curricula, were needed. The arts faculty
had gradually changed, and what we now call the humanities (history,
literature, rhetoric and ethics) had started to play a more important
role. The stress on some aspects of logic and metaphysics,
characteristic of the medieval arts faculty, was becoming obsolete. A
new curriculum adjusted to the humanities was therefore necessary.



Ramus was most concerned about the obvious lack of efficiency of the
scholastic curriculum that he had observed as a student. According to
him, students had to spend too many years learning too little of use
for them. He adopted as his motto a famous line by Vergil
"*Labor improbus omnia vincit*" (Relentless work
overcomes everything; *Georgics* 1.145). From his own
experience, he knew the importance of hard work, and he wanted to make
it possible for students of more humble means to study and, by
diligent application, reach their goals more quickly. Therefore, he
needed to make education much cheaper by shortening the amount of time
students put into studying. To achieve this, he had to reflect on the
pedagogical means and goals (Hotson 2007: 39-51).


### 2.2 Anti-Aristotelianism



Ramus' reform program may have been designed to respond to this
need. He became famous for his strong reaction against
Aristotle's undisputed primacy in the medieval university
curriculum. According to his devoted biographer Freigius, his academic
career began with a public disputation in 1536 where he defended the
thesis "that everything Aristotle had said was false"
(*quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse*). It
is unlikely, however, that such a disputation ever took place since no
one apart from Freigius mentions it. Nevertheless, the episode was
referred to by many contemporaries, as well as by later historians,
and certainly helped to associate Ramus' name with all forms of
anti-Aristotelianism (Ong 1958: 37-39). Although savage attacks
on Aristotle were not uncommon during the Reformation, Ramus'
criticism of his philosophy became one of the most famous outbursts of
anti-Aristotelianism. Yet Ramus was hardly a typical anti-Aristotelian
in the mold of Luther or other impassioned anti-intellectuals. Though
many of his followers could be considered zealots, he himself was
insistent on pointing out the difference between what he referred to
as the true and the false Aristotle. Attacks on Aristotle were often
launched by those who emphasized the fact that he had not been a
Christian; some fanatics even thought that his philosophy had paved
the way for Satan. Ramus did not share this view. According to him, it
was not because Aristotle had been a pagan that he was wrong but
rather because he had been misinterpreted by later commentators.



Ramus claimed that his work to reform the curriculum had begun during
his early schooldays. As a young student he had to endure the
inadequate way in which Aristotle was taught; no one seemed to care if
young boys could ever use what they had learnt. For Ramus, the main
reason for reforming the curriculum was related to the usefulness of
education and not to the question of Aristotle's role in it. In
fact, he emphasized the value of Aristotelian philosophy. He
considered Aristotle to be the most important of logicians, though he
pointed out that Aristotle had not invented the discipline of logic
but rather developed what his predecessors had hinted at. Even more
significant for Ramus was the need to call attention to the damage
that the *corpus Aristotelicum* had suffered after
Aristotle's death, which meant that we could not know for
certain what he had intended to say on any given question. Because of
the bad state in which Aristotle's texts were transmitted, his
commentators, in their discussions of individual books of the
*Metaphysics* and *Physics*, had taken up certain issues
that really belonged to logic. This is also why the *Organon*
gives the impression of being an amalgamation of different subjects.
Ramus laid the blame for all of this on the shoulders of the ancient
and medieval commentators who he thought had for centuries
misinterpreted the Greek philosopher owing to the poor condition of
the Aristotelian corpus. He also highlighted another circumstance that
helped to explain the confusions and obscurities that, in his view,
were scattered throughout Aristotle's books. The Philosopher
himself had intentionally made his theories a little more abstruse
than they needed to be in order to sift the wheat from the chaff among
his disciples (Ramus, *Scholae dialecticae*, in *Scholae in
liberales artes*, col. 68).



To Ramus, Aristotle was a Socratic philosopher, whose approach was
broadly in line with that of Cicero. By contrast, Aristotle's
followers, especially those belonging to the scholastic camp, were
merely a bunch of frauds: 



> 
> 
> Let us ignore all these Aristotelians and return to Aristotle, the
> author of such a noble discipline [i.e., philosophy], and to Cicero,
> who tries to emulate Aristotle's teaching and to imitate him.
> (Ramus, *Collectaneae praefationes, epistolae, orationes*, p.
> 299)
> 
> 
> 


### 2.3 Definition of Philosophy



In 1569 there was a furious exchange of letters between Ramus and one
of the most prominent and learned Aristotelians of his day, Jacob
Schegk (1511-1587), a professor at the University of
Tubingen. The conflict may not have been based solely on a
difference of philosophical opinions. Schegk had a grudge against
Ramus, who had pulled one of his books to pieces. The discussion
nevertheless forced Ramus to reconsider some of his positions.



Ramus' final contribution to the debate was entitled,
characteristically, *Defensio pro Aristotele adversus Jacobus
Scheccium*, that is, a defense of Aristotle against Schegk. In
this work he makes clear the difference between his position, which he
maintained had also been that of Aristotle, and the view of Schegk and
other Aristotelians. The question at stake was what logic really was:
its definition, its limitations, its goal and its nature. According to
the Aristotelians, the different parts of the
*Organon*--the *Categories*, *On
Interpretation*, the *Prior* and *Posterior
Analytics*, the *Topics* and the *Sophistical
Refutations*--corresponded to the different parts of logic.
There was, for instance, an essential difference between probability
(the subject of the *Topics*) and certainty (dealt with in the
two *Analytics*).



To understand Ramus' line of reasoning we have to start with his
firm rejection of the basic Aristotelian conception of philosophy. The
Aristotelians defined philosophy as a *habitus intellectualis*,
a rational attitude toward being. In looking at being we can try to
understand it; but we can also, as humans, use our knowledge to act
rightly or wrongly toward other humans. For this reason, Aristotle
divided philosophy into a theoretical part and a practical part.
Logic, however, does not fit into this division of philosophy because
it does not give us any knowledge at all of being. It is instead a way
of acquiring knowledge and of finding the truth. The Aristotelians
therefore called it a *habitus instrumentalis*, an instrumental
attitude (the Greek term *organon*, traditionally used to
denote Aristotle's logical writings, means instrument or tool).
According to the Aristotelians, philosophy always concerns the
rational aspects of human beings; their productive aspects, by
contrast, belong to the practical disciplines or arts. For the
Aristotelian, it was essential to separate science and philosophy from
the arts. Yet while Aristotle had firmly rooted his philosophical
theories in an attitude toward being, educational practice in schools
was concerned solely with theorems and rules. Young pupils had to
study not being in a theoretical and abstract way but rather the items
that the teacher demanded them to learn, often by heart.



The Stoic conception of philosophy, therefore, was often far more
suitable to a classroom situation. For the Stoics, the universe was
rationally organized in a way that was directly equivalent to human
reason. They believed that there was a correspondence in the universe,
or in nature, between order and reason and that the reason which
organized and governed the universe was essentially the same as human
reason. The connection between nature and reason could be studied from
three different perspectives: physical, ethical and rational or
logical. One consequence of the Stoic theory was that there must be an
absolute analogy between the contents of an art and those of nature,
that is, all arts must also be about nature or being. There could not
be a difference of rank between the parts of nature, nor between the
parts of philosophy, as the Aristotelians thought. Another consequence
was that logic became an integral part of philosophy rather than an
instrument to be used by the other branches of the discipline.



Ramus' way of looking at philosophy and logic was in many ways
similar to that of the Stoics. His definition of philosophy as a
*cognitio artium liberalium*, a knowledge of the liberal arts,
reveals both the influence of Stoicism and of the medieval educational
tradition. Ramus thus regarded logic as a part of philosophy and
defined it as an art that truly gives us knowledge of being.
Ramus' followers often substituted the word *doctrina*
for *cognitio*, which made it even clearer that the perspective
was more pedagogical than ontological (cf. Ramus, *Dialectica*,
p. 11, where he uses another variant, defining philosophy as a
*comprehensio praeceptorum*, a collection of precepts).



It may seem that Ramus' attitude toward Aristotle and the
Aristotelians was not very consistent. At times, he claimed to be the
only true Aristotelian and criticized the scholastic Aristotelians for
misinterpreting Aristotle. On other occasions, he maintained that the
entire Aristotelian tradition, including Aristotle himself, was
totally wrong. This inconsistency is due to the fact that, true to his
usual habit, he adopted different strategies in response to different
polemical situations. Although Ramus was an offspring of the
Aristotelian tradition, he was also influenced by Ciceronian and Stoic
ideas. Only rarely did he directly attack Aristotle himself. So, for
example, whenever there was a clash between the Aristotelian and the
Stoic way of thinking, he tried to solve the problem by pointing out
differences between Aristotle and his later commentators.


### 2.4 The three laws of philosophy



Ramus stressed that all arts should represent separate parts of
nature. It would consequently be a serious mistake to confuse one art
with another. In the *Posterior Analytics* Aristotle had set
out certain rules or laws for how a predicate should be related to a
subject in order to make a correct scientific proposition. Ramus took
over these laws; but he applied them not only to propositions but also
to the construction of entire arts.



The first law, the *lex veritatis*, or law of truth, stated
that every theorem in an art must be general and indispensable. For
example, a theorem stating that the angle of a triangle is a right
angle would not be a false statement since there are indeed triangles
with right angles. But since it is not true in relation to all
triangles, such a theorem would violate the law of truth. A theorem
which states that the sum of the degrees of the three angles of a
triangle is 180 would, however, be totally correct and generally
true.



The second law was called the *lex justitiae*, or law of
justice. Ramus regarded this as the most important of the three laws.
It ensured that justice was done to all the arts. No theorem belonging
to one art should be allowed to trespass into the subject matter of
another, since that would be unjust. This law also demanded that all
parts of an art should be homogeneous. It was on the basis of this law
that Ramus objected to Copernicus' planetary hypothesis (see
 SS1.4
 above). He held that Copernicus was not allowed to put forward
theories as to how the planets really moved in the heavens, which
belonged to the art astrophysics, while at the same time using
mathematical hypotheses, which belonged to the art of mathematics. To
Ramus, this law was fundamental for the purpose of organizing a new
curriculum and was also, as we shall see, an important aspect of his
method (Hooykaas 1958: 65).



The third law, the *lex sapientiae*, or law of wisdom, was the
concrete principle of how an art should be organized according to
general theorems. A more general theorem should always precede a less
general and more particular one. The theorem that an isosceles
triangle has angles which add up to a total of 180 degrees is quite
correct; but since it is true for all triangles, it should precede
theorems applicable to specific kinds of triangle.



This way of treating philosophy as an aggregate of rigidly separated
arts may have had some pedagogical value, but it also raised
difficulties. Ramus, for instance, could not accept metaphysics as a
separate discipline, although in this case his nominalism was also in
operation. By insisting that every art must have its correctly
formulated theorems, organized from the more general to the more
specific, and that no theorem should be allowed to have reference to
more than one art, Ramus almost seems to impose a military discipline
on nature. Sometimes his followers defined philosophy as merely a
methodical collection of arts, a *collectio methodica*, which
reveals even more clearly their understanding of the discipline.



On account of his idealistic belief in the correspondence between the
arts--including their concepts and words--and being, some
scholars have assumed that Ramus was reliant on Platonism. In his
early writings he certainly assumed a clear metaphysical link between
nature, mathematics and dialectic. Indeed, his contemporaries
sometimes called him the *Plato Gallicus*, the French Plato;
but, in reality, the Platonic influences on him were rather vague and
often concealed. Gradually, the Platonic ontological strains in his
works lost importance and faded away. Although he at times claimed to
be a Platonist, his references to Plato were mostly aimed at
distancing himself from Aristotle and, above all, from contemporary
Aristotelians. In practice, he was more often inspired by Cicero and
by Stoicism than by Platonism. And despite his attacks on Aristotle,
he was essentially dependent on the scholastic tradition (cf.
Bruyere 1984, who takes the opposite view on this issue).


## 3. Logic and method


### 3.1 Logic as an art



Logic, according to the Ramist and Stoic perspective, is a part of
philosophy. Ramus rejected the Aristotelian definition of logic as a
*habitus instrumentalis*, since an instrumental attitude could
be considered to be an effect of logic but not equivalent to it.
Instead he defined logic as the *ars bene disserendi*, the art
of correctly discussing or analyzing something. Consequently, Ramus
thought that logic was about being, which made the discipline of metaphysics
superfluous.



One of the logic books that students had for centuries studied was the
*Summulae logicales* of Petrus Hispanus (probably the same
Petrus who was elected pope in 1276 and adopted the name John XXI).
Even in the beginning of the sixteenth century the treatise was still
in use and attracted severe criticism from humanists. Ramus stated
explicitly that he wanted to remove the *Summulae* from the
curriculum, and it was mainly this book that he was thinking about
when he lamented his own youthful experiences of studying logic. His
devastating judgment on the book was that it had not made him 



> 
> 
> more judicious in his studies of history and antiquity, nor more
> skilled in disputation, nor more competent at writing poetry, nor
> indeed more competent at anything at all.... (Ramus, *Scholae
> dialecticae*, in *Scholae in liberales artes*, col. 153)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Nevertheless, Ramus' own dialectic showed many signs of
influence from *Summulae*. Therefore, to understand the
development of Ramist logic, we have to pay attention to this
scholastic background, as well as to Cicero, who played a key role in
the advance of humanist logic.



The three main parts of Aristotle's great work on logic, the
*Organon*, are represented by the *Categories*, the
*Prior* and *Posterior Analytics* and the
*Topics*. The categories (*praedicamenta*) are not only
treated as a formal part of a proposition but also, and most
importantly, as universals, which meant that their ontological status
also had to be considered. The other two parts of Aristotle's
logic dealt with the problems of how to reach scientific and
dialectical conclusions respectively: the *Analytics* is about
finding correct axioms and using them to acquire scientific knowledge;
the *Topics* teaches us how to discuss and treat those issues
where it is impossible to attain the truth, so that we have to be
satisfied with seeking what is most probable.



### 3.2 *Inventio*



The Stoics were inclined to concentrate on linguistic rather than
ontological issues. Cicero observed that the Aristotelians were mainly
interested in the aspect of logic that he called the *ars
inveniendi*, that is, the art of finding the right arguments. The
Stoics, on the other hand, according to Cicero, were more concerned
about the different aspects of the judgments that we make. They wanted
to analyze arguments. He called this kind of dialectic the *ratio
disserendi*, a definition that Ramus, via Agricola, rephrased as
the *ars bene disserendi*. While the Aristotelians thought that
the categories were the natural introduction to logic, the Stoics
preferred judgment.



During the Middle Ages both the Peripatetic and the Stoic views on
dialectic were preserved, the latter via Cicero and Augustine. Petrus
Hispanus' *Summulae* consisted of several treatises
(*tractatus*). In the first of these students could learn how
to construct a proposition. In the second Petrus discussed the five
*praedicabilia* that made it possible to classify different
kinds of propositions. The third *tractatus* dealt with the
*Categories*, the fourth and the fifth with the problems that
Aristotle had taken up in his *Prior Analytics* and in his
*Topics*. The last seven treatises were concerned with specific
logical problems such as *significatio* or *suppositio*.
With few exceptions these treatises do not correspond to any part of
the *Organon*; instead, they are for the most part related to
the *parva logicalia*, a form of medieval logical thinking
which was especially repugnant to the humanists. The *Posterior
Analytics* was hardly considered at all. The main emphasis at
school was on teaching young boys to construct syllogisms. The purpose
of the *Summulae* was not to train the students to reflect on
the problem of how to make scientifically correct conclusions but
rather to prepare them for what they normally were expected to do: to
take part in endless series of disputations. In that respect the
*Summulae* succeeded (cf. Ong 1958: 55-74).



While, for Ramus, Petrus Hispanus' *Summulae* was like a
red rag to a bull, he willingly admitted that he had learned a great
deal from a more recent book on logic, *De inventione libri
tres* by the Dutch humanist Rudolph Agricola (1443-1485).
This book, printed for the first time in 1515, was to a great extent
influenced by humanism. In many ways Agricola's logic was based
less on Aristotle than on Cicero. Aristotle had considered the
*Topics* or dialectic as a special kind of deduction. This was
the reason why Aristotelians wanted the study of logic to start with
what Cicero and the humanists often called *iudicium* or
judgment, to be learned from the *Categories*, *On
Interpretation* and the two *Analytics*, before the student
went on to the *Topics*. But Agricola disagreed. In his view,
you must find the arguments before you can employ them in your
argumentation. Aristotelians maintained instead that it was necessary
to know what to do with arguments before you could go looking for
them. In fact, Agricola hardly touched on *iudicium* in the
more than 400 pages of his treatise. In concentrating on the
*Topic*s, it was much easier for him to lean on Cicero rather
than on Aristotle. The close connection between *inventio*, as
a part of logic, and the art of rhetoric made it seem, however, as if
humanists could not separate the two disciplines. Another weakness
which Aristotelians often pointed out in Agricola and Ramus was that
they were not interested in finding answers to difficult questions but
rather in finding good arguments to use in defending a certain thesis
(Sellberg 1979: 58).


### 3.3 Judgment



Ramus wanted to carry on from where Agricola had left off. So, he
added to *inventio* the other part of logic, *iudicium*.
Although it never received as much attention as *inventio*,
*iudicium* became very controversial in Ramus' account,
and he therefore made large changes to his presentation of it. His
most detailed discussion of *iudicium* was in the 1566 edition
of the *Dialectica*, but this was neither the most read nor the
most important edition. The shorter version, published in 1572, was
more suitable for schools and was therefore followed in most later
editions. In the 1572 edition there are 32 chapters devoted to
*inventio* and only 20 to *iudicium*. Every chapter was
carefully constructed with questions and definitions of the main
problems and with examples, mostly taken from ancient authors.



In his first treatise on logic, *Dialecticae institutiones*
(1543) Ramus had divided *iudicium* into three parts:
syllogistic, method and a kind of doctrine of ideas. The third part
was an odd element added in order to demonstrate that logic had a
divine origin; three years later it was removed, never to return.
Thereafter, he adopted a two-fold division of *iudicium* into
the *axiomaticum* and the *dianoeticum*. In the former
part students learnt to organize the arguments found in
*inventio* into a proposition or--as Stoics and even Ramus
preferred to call it--an *axioma*. The second part of
*iudicium*, the *dianoeticum*, was divided into
syllogistic and method. The most remarkable aspect of his treatment of
syllogistic was that Ramus admitted a *syllogismus
expositorius*, in which the conclusion did not have to be about
something universal but could be about something individual, as we can
see from the example: 



> 
> 
> Socrates is a philosopher; he is also a human being; consequently,
> there is at least one human being who is a philosopher. (Ramus,
> *Dialectica* 1623: 71) 
> 
> 
> 


 This type of conclusion would nowadays seem unscientific and
arbitrary; but the fact that Ramus included it tells us something
about his attitude toward logic. As we have seen, he thought that it
was basically a natural way to think, and he was determined to make it
useful for the humanities (SS 1.4). Given the Aristotelian demand that
a scientific conclusion should always be universal, it was extremely
difficult to deal with the uniqueness of history and literature in a
scientific framework. This syllogism was an attempt to cope with that
difficulty. But it also reveals Ramus' lack of interest in the
problem of how to acquire new knowledge. It shows that his aim was
instead to systemize and organize arguments. For Ramus, therefore,
method became the most important part of logic.


### 3.4 Method



Method was a topic of enormous interest during the sixteenth century.
Aristotle's words in the *Physics*
(184a10-22) were difficult to interpret, and all
sides claimed an inheritance from him. Ramus' interpretation of
the lines in question made it possible for him to maintain that his
method was strictly Aristotelian. The Aristotelians, for their part,
largely followed Averroes' commentary on this passage, which led
to a very different conclusion (Ramus, *Dialectica* 1569:
513-515). The problem was to determine whether method was a way
of acquiring knowledge or of displaying it. Discussions about
methodological issues changed in this period from being merely
commentaries on Aristotle to taking into account a wide range of
considerations, including ones belonging to medicine and geometry. The
concepts of analysis and synthesis, for example, were borrowed from
geometry and soon became the main principles of method. The problem
for many logicians was that it was impossible to find relevant
discussions of these concepts in the *Prior* and *Posterior
Analytics*, despite the titles of these treatises (Gilbert 1960:
27-32). It became obvious that more than one method could exist
and that there was a difference between *methodus* and
*ordo*. The latter term came to be applied to a pedagogical
method, a way of teaching or displaying. But it was also necessary to
think about natural vs. artificial *methodus* and
*ordo*, as well as considering the correct way of proceeding
from the general to the particular and vice versa.



Among Aristotelians there was considerable disagreement on these
issues. But Ramus took an extreme position. He explicitly denied that
there could be more than one method and that there was any difference
between *methodus* and *ordo*. As a consequence of his
definition of an art, he could not accept any uncertainty as to how
one should proceed or as to whether the procedure should be natural or
artificial. In his succinct Latin formulation, he claimed that what
was *notiora nobis*, more known to us, must be the same as what
was *notiora naturae*, more known to nature. What is more
general with respect to nature must consequently have priority in our
method over what is more particular. If you see a living creature in
the distance, it is not until you are closer to it that you will be
able to identify it as a human being, and it will take still more time
before you can eventually recognize who it is. This example shows,
according to Ramus, that a method which proceeds from the general to
the particular is not arbitrary but natural (Ramus, *Quod sit unica
doctrinae instituendae methodus*, p. 117). Since it was obvious,
at least to Ramus, that an argument is more general than an
*axioma*, or proposition, and that an *axioma* is more
general than a syllogism, this proved that his way of organizing logic
was the correct one. The other arts should, of course, be constructed
in the same way. In medicine, for example, it is natural to start with
the whole body before you go on to the limbs. When you cure a man who
has a wound on his forehead, you can either say that you cure him or
his whole body, but not that you cure his eyes or his belly, which,
like his forehead, are parts of his body (Ramus, *Dialectica*
1569: 487).



This method was an important part of Ramus' logic since it had
direct relevance for his philosophy as a whole. Every art must be
founded on it, given that it was not merely the correct but the only
method. In describing the arts, he and his followers often used large
dichotomies, set out in diagrams or bracketed tables; but it is important to
note that these dichotomies were an instrument to display the
structure of an art. They were not--as many historians have
supposed--the same thing as the method. Ramus thought it
essential to construct a system of precepts arranged according to
their degree of generalization, always starting with the more general
and proceeding toward the more specific. This would make the method
natural, so that it reflects nature, just as the arts do. To stress
this point, Ramus in some of his writings preferred to call the second
part of logic not *iudicium* but *dispositio* or
arrangement.



Considering Ramus' desire to make logic responsive to the needs
of the humanities, it is reasonable to ask whether the method was
applicable to artificial products such as poetry or only to natural
things. Ramus was aware of the difficulty of demonstrating his natural
method in literature. This was a particular problem for him since he
wanted students to learn the method by reading the great authors of
antiquity. According to him, the method was also used by poets like
Virgil and Horace. He had to admit, however, that the ancients had
sometimes intentionally departed from it. Therefore, in earlier
editions of the *Dialectica* he had included another method, a
*methodus prudentiae*, which, as he pointed out, was really no
different from the one method. The confusion occasioned by this
special method, however, led Ramus to remove it from later editions of
the treatise. Instead, he talked about a *methodi secunda
illustratio*, that is, a second representation of the one method
(Ramus, *Dialectica* 1623: 93; see Hotson 2007: 48).


## 4. Practice



It has already been pointed out that Ramus had little interest in the
precise requirements for attaining scientific knowledge but was
instead primarily concerned with curriculum reforms. Yet he by no
means rejected Aristotelian epistemology, and he accepted that the
principles of every art should be based on experience and observation.
The process of acquiring knowledge should consist of four steps, as we
can see in the following example. In the first place, we *feel*
intoxicated. Secondly, we realize by means of *observation*
that this feeling may have been induced by wine, since we have
consumed a great deal of it. But is there actually a causal connection
between our consumption of wine and our feeling of drunkenness? To
establish certain knowledge, it is necessary, thirdly, to examine by
means of *induction* the effects of drinking wine, so that we
can conclude that the wine is genuinely the cause of our drunkenness.
Fourthly, we can by means of *experience* use our knowledge to
avoid getting drunk next time.



According to Ramus, there are always three essential aspects of every
art which need to be considered: nature, principles and practice
(*exercitatio*). It was the third element, practice, which was
essential, for it was through practice that one demonstrated that the
art and its principles were correct. If they were correct, the art was
useful and constructed according to nature. All three elements were
thus closely connected, and Ramus often presented the various arts by
setting out their three main parts (as, for instance, in the
*Dialecticae institutiones*).



We have seen that Ramus considered it extremely important to follow
the natural method. When, however, it came to practice, this was not
always possible. Sometimes it was necessary to start with the most
particular, at other times the most general. Practice, moreover,
required analysis as well as synthesis. Ramus wanted students to learn
logic by reading and practicing the way we naturally think and argue.
An oration or even a poem could reveal how the principles of logic
work in practice. We should start by analyzing the text in order to
see how it is constructed according to logical principles: what
problem is being considered, what arguments are chosen and so on.
After this has been done, the text is further analyzed with help of
the main parts of logic, *inventio* and *iudicium*, and
afterwards by the minor parts: the propositions, syllogisms and
suchlike (Ramus, *Scholae dialecticae*, in *Scholae in
liberales artes*, cols 192-193; Cf. Ong 1958:
263-267). When the analysis is completed, it is time for
students to move on to synthesis, the part of practice that Ramus
usually referred to as *genesis*. At this stage students were
expected to imitate, more or less, the procedure which they had
previously studied by means of analysis. This was a crucial moment
because they could now show how useful their studies had been by
demonstrating the ways in which they had benefited from their
theoretical knowledge.



The same procedure could be applied to any art since analysis involved
textual study. When reading Aristotle's *Physics* or
Pliny's *Natural History*, students did not examine
nature but rather what the ancients thought about natural things.
Although this made it possible for them to apply the same procedure,
but from a different angle, to other ancient texts, it also restricted
their studies to a great extent by focusing solely on texts. It
certainly showed that Ramus' real intention was to make the
curriculum useful to students of the humanities and to future scholars
and also, by making the course of studies as short and effective as
possible, to a new category of student, aiming for a different type of
occupation (Hooykaas 1958: 22; Skalnik 2002: 8).



As a young lecturer Ramus was accused of violating the rules of the
University of Paris; and the specific charge was of combining the
different arts and bringing the study of ancient orators into them.
The university statutes prescribed that studies should proceed in a
specific order, starting with grammar, followed by rhetoric and so on.
For instance, students were expected to read Cicero's orations
before they went on to logic, which entailed memorizing a large number
of rules and mnemonic aids such as the *pons asinorum*, which
helped them to find the correct middle terms for various types of
syllogism. This accusation may seem somewhat paradoxical given that
Ramus was very anxious not to confuse the arts in any way. Modern
scholars have emphasized this point too much and overlooked the fact
that Ramus actually made a very clear distinction between manuals or
textbooks and practice. Nancelius describes the importance Ramus
attached to combining the different arts in practice and notes that he
introduced an educational exercise at his own college, which,
according to Nancelius, made all his students more learned and better
orators than at other colleges. It was decisive for Ramus to teach his
disciples how to put their knowledge into practice. The curriculum
that he himself had followed in his youth, on the other hand, had
forced students to complete the study of one art before proceeding to
the next. Ramus turned this upside down. The arts should be kept
completely separate. When, however, students put what they had learned
into practice, they should not hesitate to combine the contents of
different arts. On the contrary, it was necessary for them to do so in
order to make their studies truly useful (Nancelius *Petri Rami
Vita*: 189-193; Mack 2011: 9).



Ramus systematized the arts according to his method, which stated that
each art or *doctrina* should have exclusive rights to its own
principles. One result of this was that, as mentioned above, he
totally rejected metaphysics as a discipline, since ontological issues
could not be separated from logical ones. Another was that he defined
rhetoric as having only two parts: style and delivery
(*elocutio* and *pronuntiatio*). This was an extremely
radical transformation of rhetoric, which was usually considered to
have three additional parts (*inventio*, *iudicium* and
*memoria*). It is easy to understand why he excluded
*inventio* and *iudicium* from rhetoric, since he
regarded them as belonging to dialectic. As Mack points out, this did
not in any way mean that Ramus thought that the practice of rhetoric
could be restricted solely to style and delivery. On the contrary, he
strongly maintained that all the parts of rhetoric and dialectic were
closely intertwined in performance; and Mack underlines that Ramus in
no way wanted to reduce the scope of rhetoric: 



> 
> 
> Ramus' rhetoric and dialectic textbooks take a strongly
> dialectical approach to a syllabus which is primarily rhetorical.
> (Mack 2011: 13) 
> 
> 
> 



However, Ramus' reason for removing *memoria*, memory,
was typically Ramist. All arts had to be methodologically adapted to
nature. Since the natural order is also basically our normal way of
thinking, a genuine knowledge of any art must always be easy for us to
remember. Therefore, we do not need the aids supplied by
mnemonics.



As has already been noted, Ramus' endeavors to increase the
efficiency of education and, in this way, make it possible for
students of lesser means to study, pushed him to change the curriculum
radically and shorten it. It would take no more than seven years to
complete, which was a considerable reduction compared to all other
curricula. Nevertheless, he included some mathematical sub-disciplines
such as mechanics that were normally not studied. His lectures on the
history of mathematics revealed an increasing disapproval of the
ancient Greeks' inclination for making mathematics too abstract
and, consequently, neglecting its application; Euclid was considered
one of those who was most to blame. Ramus even censured Archimedes for
not having assigned sufficient importance to utility and for having
been too prone to direct his projects towards pure contemplation.
Ramus himself lauded the way the German city of Nuremberg had instead
supported and encouraged the study of the mechanical arts; for him,
such a syllabus was the key to the future (Ramus, *Scholarum
mathematicarum*, p. 28 and *Collectaneae praefationes,
epistolae, orationes*, pp. 136-137, and see Hotson 2007:
80).


## 5. Freedom to philosophize



In a letter of 1551 to his patron, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Ramus
wrote that he had heard a rumor that he was considered to be an
*academicus*, that is, an adherent of the Academic school or,
in other words, a skeptic, who taught his students to doubt. Although
Ramus firmly rejected this accusation, he had difficulties in clearing
himself of the charge (Ramus, *Collectaneae praefationes,
epistolae, orationes*, p. 327).



From the very beginning he had criticized the scholastics for
philosophizing, not in order to reach the truth, but to endorse the
views of their master. Ramus accused them of treating Aristotle as
infallible and said that in doing so they subordinated their own
reason to blind faith in authority. In this respect, they were by no
means true Aristotelians, for: 



> 
> 
> Aristotle philosophized with the utmost freedom and, for the sake of
> the truth, he held views with utter freedom, against the entire
> tradition of the past, including his teacher Plato. And he practiced
> the art of logic not only in short debates but also in continuous
> disputations, in which both sides of the question were discussed. It
> was, in fact, his interpreters who rejected the freedom to seek and
> defend the truth. (Ramus, *Scholae*, in *Scholae in
> liberales artes*, col. 29)
> 
> 
> 



If Freigius' account of the 1536 disputation is correct (see
 SS2.2
 above), this was one of the very few occasions when Ramus really did
attack Aristotle. On the whole, as we have seen, he tried to separate
Aristotle from his later commentators, and he often explained the
mistakes of Aristotelian philosophy as the result of bad interpreters
who had distorted Aristotle's original meaning. For Ramus, as
for other humanists, the scholastics became the villains of the
story.



In the *Prior* and *Posterior Analytics*, Aristotle had
set out a method of attaining reliable knowledge; and in the
*Topics* he had dealt with all those instances where it was not
possible to attain such knowledge. This latter part of logic was
dominant in the tradition of *inventio* associated with
Agricola (see
 SS3.2
 above), where the standard practice, attributed to Aristotle by Ramus
in the passage quoted above, was to discuss both sides of a question
(*in utramque partem disserere*). This describes a
confrontational situation where one side argues against another,
resulting in the victory of one or the other position. In such
circumstances, however, you can never say that the side which triumphs
is the absolute winner, though you can come fairly close to a
definitive resolution. In dialectical argumentation, therefore, we
must be satisfied with probabilities. But if the very best we can
attain is probability, the knowledge we reach is not as certain as
that which results from a scientific demonstration. Consequently, it
is more difficult to be fanatically devoted to a particular opinion.
In the wake of humanism, ancient skepticism had its own renaissance.
Ramus, however, in line with the majority of humanists, was more of an
eclectic than a skeptic. He regarded Galen as his ideal since he had
borrowed from earlier thinkers what he considered to be good and
useful for his own theories (Ramus, *Dialectica* 1569: 11 and
27).



Adopting radical skepticism in this period would have laid Ramus open
to the serious charge of holding dangerous philosophical or
theological views and even of atheism. It was therefore imperative for
him to refute this accusation. To his patron, the cardinal, who had
expressed concern over the claim that Ramus was an
*academicus*, he explained that the *academici* were
merely eclectics, who 



> 
> 
> differ from other philosophers as free men differ from slaves, as the
> wise differ from the reckless and as the steadfast differ from the
> obstinate. 
> 
> 
> 



Not surprisingly, Ramus declared that he would rather be a philosopher
than the slave of a philosopher (Ramus, *Collectaneae praefationes,
epistolae, orationes*, pp. 55 and 89). There was no danger in
allowing men to think freely, he maintained, since true reason can
never be wrong. As long as we used our ability to understand the
natural order, everything would turn out well in the end. Risks arose
when we did not dare to trust our own reason but instead, like the
scholastics, uncritically adopted the opinions of others.



Ramus' belief in the freedom to philosophize and his eclecticism
caused difficulties for his followers. If they showed too much
enthusiasm for Ramus' ideas, would they not also be accused of
being the slaves of their master? Ramus himself was aware of this
problem, a kind of "Catch 22" situation. "What
prevents us", he wrote, 



> 
> 
> from briefly playing Socrates and, having left aside all our trust in
> Aristotelian authority, asking: is this the true and correct art of
> dialectic? Perhaps the Philosopher deceives us with his authority?
> (Ramus, *Scholae dialecticae*, in *Scholae in liberales
> artes*, col. 155) 
> 
> 
> 



Here we see the great respect that Ramus and his adherents had for
Socrates, whom they regarded as their hero. Ramus associated his own
dialectical procedure with the method used by Socrates, 



> 
> 
> whose main intention was to draw those with whom he debated away from
> views based on opinions and the testimonies of other people and to
> lead them toward mental composure and freedom of judgement ....
> (*ibid*.)
> 
> 
> 



Although his followers preferred to call their philosophy Socratic
rather than Ramist, in order to avoid the accusation of slavish trust
in his authority, this tactic was not very successful. One of his most
devoted disciples, Guilielmus Adolphus Scribonius, attacked another
Ramist for departing from the teaching of the *Dialectica* and
for criticizing Ramus. Yet, at the same time, he emphatically declared
that every adherent of Ramist philosophy must swear to the principle
of *libertas philosophandi*, the freedom to philosophize.
Scribonius was certainly aware of the difficulty of striking a balance
between total freedom and permitting support for a particular school.
He tried to resolve it by maintaining that while all philosophers were
to some degree wrong, Ramus, like Socrates, had almost always been
right. By adopting this position, however, he took some of the sting
out of his own criticism of the insufficiently faithful Ramist, as the
latter was quick to point out (Sellberg 1979: 106-107).



Neither Ramus nor his followers felt able to extend this freedom to
theological questions, though their scholastic opponents accused them
of having done so. In the end, they had to concede so many
restrictions on the freedom to philosophize that hardly anything
remained.


## 6. Usefulness and significance of Ramism



Some of Ramus' opponents called him *usuarius or
usurarius*. Both words derive etymologically from the Latin verb
*uti*, to use or to receive benefit from. The second term,
*usurarius*, is directly related to *usura*, interest.
Its application to Ramus was, no doubt, intended as a criticism,
indicating that he was strutting around in borrowed finery, perhaps
combined with an imputation of avarice. According to Nancelius, his
fortune was modest but still substantial enough for him to defray the
costs of endowing a professorship (Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*:
243). By insisting that studies should be useful, humanists were
attacking the scholastics for promoting what they regarded as a
useless curriculum. Ramus, along with other humanists, often ridiculed
the meaningless rules and facts that young students were compelled to
memorize (Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*: 212; cf. Ong 1958:
321n). It is easy to see why such unsatisfactory practices in the
universities were condemned and why a humanist like Ramus was deeply
unsympathetic toward the bad Latin which scholastics regularlarly and
deliberately employed in disputations to express their logical type of
linguistic arguments: 



> 
> 
> Incredible as it seems, it is nevertheless true and can be found in
> published books that at this famous university there have been
> teachers who stubbornly maintained and defended the view that *Ego
> amat* ('I loves') is as correct as *Ego amo*
> ('I love'). (Ramus, *Scholae grammaticae*, in
> *Scholae in liberales artes*, col. 15)
> 
> 
> 



As we have seen, Ramus wanted the study of every art to be directed
toward practice. There was no point in memorizing rules unless one
also learned how to use them. In this respect he was a pioneer in the
field of pedagogy. When lecturing, he would not rattle off one
paragraph after another, but instead would comment on the text page by
page, a habit which earned him the nickname *paginarius*, the
"page man". He set out to reform the curriculum, and he
wrote books that would fit in with the new demands of the age. Not
surprisingly, his innovative ideas attracted interest from those
outside the universities. The king of France and other rulers were
keen to hire well-educated officials for their expanding
administrations, enabling them to reduce their dependence on the
church. They therefore lent their enthusiastic support to Ramus'
call for useful studies.



As a humanist, Ramus was also interested in including the humanities
within the encyclopedia of learning. He himself intended to edit and
comment on every speech of Cicero. His lectures were famous and,
according to Nancelius, his spoken Latin was eloquent (Nancelius
*Petri Rami Vita*: 207). Although he did not want rhetoric and
philosophy to be confused as arts, he certainly wanted logic and
rhetoric to be integral parts of the student's practice in every
discipline; and he specifically wanted to make logic more useful for
the humanities (see
 SS3.4
 above).



Ramus was neither a bad logician nor a bad philosopher. Nonetheless,
his work in these fields does not earn him a prominent
place in the history of logic or philosophy. But this was not what he
set out to achieve. His goal was to reform university teaching of the
arts; and he deserves to be regarded as a pedagogical trailblazer,
even though he perhaps lacked the originality and creativity of a
thinker such as Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670).



Nancelius reminds us that Ramus was accused by his opponents of 



> 
> 
> introducing poets and orators into the schools, and of claiming that
> you could derive from them the benefit not only of speaking well, but
> the sure practice of the whole philosophy, especially ethics, rhetoric
> and logic. (Nancelius *Petri Rami Vita*: 213) 
> 
> 
> 



It was not, in any case, his originality that brought him to a
position of eminence among his contemporaries. The reason for his
enormous impact, within both the university and the wider society, was
his capacity to perceive new needs and to respond to new demands. His
program of educational reform was, for instance, well suited to the
Reformation but even more so to the demands of the early modern
states, which needed better educated officials and manufacturers,
craftsmen and businessmen. Because Ramist logic made possible a more
concise presentation of different questions, it proved more
advantageous than scholasticism to Protestant theologians, who began
to set out their doctrines in the form of *loci* or brief
passages on a specific topic. Toward the end of the sixteenth century,
several Protestant professors tried to combine the ideas of Ramus with
those of the Lutheran educational reformer Philipp Melanchthon
(1497-1560).



Ramus appealed to statesmen and to humanists on account of his
endeavors to promote the humanities, especially the study of ancient
culture and languages. His anti-scholastic and anti-Aristotelian
outbursts attracted other groups who, sometimes erroneously, regarded
him as an ally. The emphasis which he and other humanists laid on the
usefulness of studies was a means to transform learned culture and
adjust it to the new demands of modern states.



For the last 50 years Ramus has been at the center of considerable
scholarly interest and activity. Modern scholars are divided on some
basic points. There are those such as Bruyere-Robinet who strongly
disagree with Ong's disparaging opinion about Ramus as a philosopher
and think instead that his departure from the Aristotelian tradition
and all his writings stemmed from a Platonic ontological outlook,
which he never abandoned. From such a point of view, Ramus was a
consistent philosopher and creator of a coherent system. Thus, his
censure of Aristotle was not directed only against scholastic abuse of
Aristotelianism.


 Other scholars, however, are not so sure on this point and have
researched Ramus from other perspectives. The focus has gradually
shifted from examining Ramus' own works -- even if several
of his books have been edited, and various aspects of his textbooks,
lectures and commentaries have been explored -- to tracing their
significance and influence.


Studies have been devoted to his followers and to the political and
social context in which he developed his ideas and not least to a
better understanding of the impact his writings and his program had on
the education in early-modern Europe. We now know more about Ramus'
own pedagogical ideas and his radical ambition to reform higher
education, as well as his political outlook, at least in general
terms. We also know that, contrary to early assumptions, his ideas did
not have a confessional impact. His pedagogical program was not
carried out primarily at Reformed universities. Undoubtedly, however,
his violent death made him into a martyr for the Reformers and even
for other Protestants. Indeed, it was not at old and well-established
universities that professors lectured from the Ramist textbooks but
instead at poorer and less renowned schools such as *gymnasia*
or *gymnasia illustria*. From this perspective, the importance
of Ramus' program cannot be overestimated. In small Hanseatic cities
and imperial counties and principalities, it became possible, thanks
to the Ramist curriculum, to found schools and teach young students,
in an adequate way, to fulfill a variety of future positions. Of
course, the new pedagogical forms and syllabuses were not well
received by everyone in the republic of learning. As has already been
noted, the humanists had difficulties accepting such condensed studies
of classical literature, and anyone interested in digging deep into
philosophical problems was likely to find concise Ramist summaries
insufficient. As Hotson had demonstrated, this resistance did not
defeat the impact of the Ramist textbooks, but it did change it. At
the end of the 16th century, several authors and professors tried to
combine Ramist doctrine and the best of his ideas with a more thorough
outline of Aristotelian philosophy, in order to produce a kind of
compendium or systematized presentation from which students could
efficiently benefit in a relatively short space of time. Instead of
spending several years reading Aristotle's treatises, lengthy
commentaries or other ancient texts, a host of poor university
students could study the Ramist compendia which replaced these
works. This sometimes makes it difficult to decide if a certain author
should be categorized as a *Ramist*, a *semi-Ramist* or
a *Philippo-Ramist*; but Wilson has suggested a conceivable way
to determine if a logical textbook puts forward what she identifies as
a more Aristotelian logic of stasis or rather, in the Ramist manner, a
logic of dynamism. With the latter Wilson means a focusing on the
moving parts of logic like verbs rather than on nouns which the
Aristotelian textbooks seemed to prefer. She demonstrates a short way
to arbitrate which of the two practices gain the upper hand by looking
on the system of chapters in the textbooks, of which those more
characteristic of Aristotelianism begin with the *predicables*
and the *predicaments* while the Ramist ones rather start
with *inventio* and then the headings cause, form, end and
effect and so on. The inclination to either dynamism or stasis would
then be discernible even in all those textbooks that in a different
extent were mixtures of a Ramist and an Aristotelian logic (Wilson
2019; cf. Feingold 2001 & Freedman 1993).


Studies of Ramus' influence on learned and pedagogical programs
have been devoted to his many adherents in early modern Europe and to
the different circumstances in which these individuals developed his
curriculum. In Northern and Central Europe, Ramus' textbooks, both in
Latin and in the vernacular, were frequently used and admired but they
also aroused resistance (Reid and Wilson 2011; Knight and Wilson
2019).


There is also an increasing scholarly concentration on the
influence of Ramus and Ramism on vernacular literature. The famous
1555 edition of his dialectic in French was followed by others in
various different vernaculars. And by employing the vernacular the
works of the Pleiade and of Ramus converged in Paris. Even
though scholars have tried to find more substantial links to the
Pleiade in other fields, few have been found. Frequent studies
on grammar and in particular on Ramus' and Talon's many rhetoric
textbooks have encouraged studies and debates about their impact on
literature and culture. Inspired by Tuve's classic work on
metaphysical imagery, scholars have discussed what consequence of
Ramus' putting the arts of rhetoric and dialectic into common practice
may have had.


Another controversy concerns Ramus' impact on literature and the
humanities. Grafton and Jardine have argued that Ramism meant a step
away from humanism toward a kind of pragmatism; but against these
conclusions, Henderson has maintained that even if Ramus wanted to
achieve too much with his one method, his ambition had been to
unite rhetoric with philosophy, including moral philosophy. On
the other hand, Sharratt has pinpointed Ramus' lack of literary
sensibility as a reason why he never succeeded in making his philosophy
a part of the humanist tradition. At English educational institutions,
Ramism often was considered a threat to the humanities (Grafton &
Jardine 1986, Henderson 1999, Couzinet 2015, Sharratt 1976 &
Feingiold 2001).