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Ramist Method and the Commercial Mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Walter J. Ong S.J.
Walter J. Ong S.J.*
Affiliation:
St. Louis University
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Extract

One of the persistent puzzles concerning Peter Ramus and his followers is the extraordinary diffusion of their works during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The general pathway of this diffusion has been well known since Waddington's Ramus in 1855. It proceeds chiefly through bourgeois Protestant groups of merchants and artisans more or less tinged with Calvinism. These groups are found not only in Ramus’ native France, but especially in Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, England, Scotland, Scandinavia, and New England. Perry Miller's work, The New England Mind: the Seventeenth Century, is the most detailed study of Ramism in any such group. Such groups were moving into more openly influential positions socially and were improving themselves intellectually, and Ramism appeals to them as they move up.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 8 , 1961 , pp. 155 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1961

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References

1 Pierre Mesnard, review of Ong, Walter J., Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)Google Scholar and Ramus and Talon Inventory (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), in Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance XXI (1959), 568-576; Neal W. Gilbert, review of the same volumes in Ren. News XII (1959), 269-271; Wilhelm Risse, review of the same volumes in Deutsche Literaturzeitung LXXXXI, Heft I (1960), cols. 7-11.

2 Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, p. 5, where the count is based on Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory. In the latter work, p. 14, I have conjectured that ‘in all the countries together where Ramism appears there is perhaps a total of about two hundred further printings which might qualify as editions or adaptations of one or another of Ramus’ and Talon's works’ and which do not appear in the Inventory. Since publication of these two works, coöperative readers, among whom I must mention particularly Dr. Wilhelm Risse of Berlin, have supplied me with additional entries to the number of nearly thirty at present, a few of these being rare Scandinavian editions.

3 Gilbert, Ren. News XII (1959), 271.

4 Wilbur Samuel Howell, ‘Ramus and the Decay of Dialogue’, Quar.Jour. of Speech XLVI (1960), 90.

5 Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory, passim.

6 Logicae institutiones tironum adolescenlium caplui accommodatae … a Marco Frederico Wendelino (ed. novissima, Amsterdam, 1654). Among the many other editions advertising their pedagogical value on their title pages one might note: Beurhaus's ‘pedagogical dialectic’, De P. Rami Dialectica praecipuis capitibus disputationes … et … comparationes: … paedagogiae logicae pars secunda(Cologne, 1588), … pars tertia (Cologne, 1596); Freige's Ramist logic for beginners, Logica ad usum rudiorum in epitomen redacta ([Nürnberg?]: typis Gerlachianis, 1590); the editions published by Wéchel and Antonius ‘with the commentaries omitted for the sake of studious youth’, Dialecticae libri duo, nunc in gratiam studiosae iuventutis absque commentariis in lucem editi (Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1591; Hanau, 1598; Hanau, 1600); etc.

7 Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, p. 8.

8 Ibid.

9 This definition of dialectic opens the Summulae logkales of Peter of Spain, against whom Ramus and other humanists rebelled. But the paramount role assigned by Peter to dialectic or logic was not by any means contested by Ramists.

10 Hooykaas, Humanisme, science, et réforme, especially pp. 20-32, 64-90.

11 Ganss, George E., Saint Ignatius’ Idea of a Jesuit University (Milwaukee, 1954), p. 30 Google Scholar.

12 Turnèbe, Adrien, Disputatio ad librum Ciceronis defato (Paris, 1556)Google Scholar, fol. 27; Nicolas de Nancel, Petri Rami… vita, in Nancel, Dedamationum liber …: addita est P. Rami… vita (Paris, 1600), p. 36.

13 For a full explanation of Ramist ‘method’ and the relevant texts in Ramus’ works and the works of others, see my Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, especially pp. 225-269.

14 Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, pp. 149-167.

15 Temple, William, Admonitio Francisci Mildapetti (Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1589), pp. 97–100 Google Scholar; this work was first published in 1580 at London.

16 Ramus, , Dialectices libri duo, cum notis variorum quas colligit… I. van Aelhuysen (Tiel, 1664), pp. 170–171 Google Scholar (lib. II, c. xviii).

17 I am indebted to Dr. Wilhelm Risse of Berlin for pointing out to me that there are indications of interest in method to be found in Melanchthon rather earlier than I had suspected, although I have as yet been unable to follow up his valuable leads.

18 Zilzel, Edgar, ‘The Sociological Roots of Science’, American Journal of Sociology XLVII (1941-1942), 544–562 Google Scholar.

19 Kingdon, Robert M., ‘The Plantin Breviaries: A Case Study in die Sixteenth-Century Business Operations of a Publishing House’, Bibliotheque d'Humanisine et Renaissance XXII (1960), 133–150 Google Scholar.

20 For a recent study, see Curt F. Bühler, The University and the Press in Fifteenth-Century Bologna (Notre Dame, Ind., 1958, Texts and Studies in the History of Mediaeval Education, no. VII).

21 Ong, ‘System, Space, and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism’, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance XVIII (1956), 222-239; Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, PP. 307-314.

22 Wéchel's preface in A. Talaei Rhetorica, P. Rami praelectionibus illustrata (ed. postrema, Paris: A. Wéchel, 1567). Ramus’ adversary Jacques Charpentier (Carpentarius) also had referred to licking his own writings into shape, but before publication rather than after. See his Descriptio uniuersae naturae pars posterior … (Paris: Gabriel Buon, 1564), fol. *iijv (‘Carpentarius lectori’).

23 Ramus, Dialectici commentarii tres authore Audomaro Talaeo editi (1546), p. 84—a work certainly by Ramus; see Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory, no. 3. This description is repeated over and over again in later editions of Ramus’ works on dialectic.

24 Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, pp. 311-312.

25 Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory, no. 40.

26 Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, pp. 37-41.

27 Iacobi Martini … Logicae Peripateticae per dichotomias in gratiam Ramistarum resolutae libri duo (Wittenberg, 1614). In point of fact, this book tends to make Aristotle out as a Ramist.

28 J. H. Bisterfeld (Biesterfeld, Bisterfeldius), Bisterfeldius redivivus (The Hague, 1661), II (Part II), 37-41.

29 Renaissance Concepts of Method (N. Y., 1960), pp. 233-235.