The humanists' reassessment of the study of language

The traditional account of the impact of humanism on the logic curriculum blames the supposed ‘barbarousness’ of the mediaeval logicians' use of language for the humanists' hostility to the logic of the traditional curriculum. In their standard history of logic the Kneales wrote:

“The first blow to the prestige of logic came from the humanists, or classical scholars, of the Renaissance, i.e. in the fifteenth century. Their objection to scholasticism, and to medieval logic in particular, was not that it was false in any details, but rather that it was barbarous in style and unattractive in content by contrast with the rediscovered literature of antiquity. Who but a dullard would devote his life to the proprietates terminorum when he might read the newly found poem of Lucretius De Rerum Natura or learn Greek and study Plato?”

According to this account, a commitment to eloquence as the basis for all learning led humanists to turn from logic, the study of the technical manipulation of a formal language, to rhetoric:

“The writing of elegant Latin was now the chief accomplishment to be learnt, and for this Cicero and Quintilian were the authorities. From them the men of the Renaissance acquired the Roman attitude to scholarship, with the result that genuine logic was neglected for rhetoric and books which purported to be on logic quoted Cicero as often as Aristotle.”