Arguments in Rhetoric Against Quintilian: Translation and Text of Peter Ramus's Rhetoricae Distinctiones in Quintilianum

Introduction

INTRODUCTION ~~~~~i\lrJl HIS VOLUME offers the text and translation of a pivotal book by one of the most influential (and controversial) writers of early modern times. The public career of its author began in clamor and ended in assassination. In September of 1543 the Parisian printer Jacobus Bogardus issued together in one volume two short technical books on logic! written in Latin by an obscure young college instructor. Their author, Pierre de la Ramee, twentyeight years old, was then teaching in the small College de l'Ave Maria within the University of Paris.2 One book was called Dialecticae institutiones (Training in Dialectic) and the other Aristotelicae animadversiones (Remarks on Aristotle). They were but two books among many published that year,3 but they began one of the most spectacular careers of that century. What shocked his fellow teachers, setting him on a collision course with the educational and philosophical establishment of his day, was that in these two books la Ramee (or Ramus, as he styled himself)4 issued a direct challenge to the authority of Aristotle. The magnitude of this step may be difficult for many to understand today, when virtually nothing is beyond public challenge. But both the writings of Aristotle and the dialectical methodology of Aristotle had been dominant at Paris since the days of Peter Abelard in the twelfth century, and had been officially cemented into the university structure in 1215 with the approval of the first"curriculum" 2 INTRODUCTION by the papal legate Robert de Sorbon.5 For more than four centuries , then, Aristotle was the foundational author for Paris, "Mother of Universities." The whole edifice of scholastic philosophy-and theology-had an Aristotelian base. Since newer educational institutions throughout Europe tended to follow the Parisian model, the Aristotelian cast of mind had been equally familiar for centuries at universities from Oxford to Vienna.6 To say then as Ramus did that Aristotle did not understand logic, and did not even know how to use the logical syllogism, was to threaten an intellectual earthquake. Moreover, to bypass the whole medieval scholastic tradition was to cast aside half a millennium of theological scholarship as well.7 Reaction was immediate. Ramus shortly found himself forced into a public debate with one Antonio de Gouveia after some of his fellow teachers appealed directly to King Francis I to intervene in the case. Ramus spoke well, but was unable to control the outcome of the debate;8 on March 26, 1544, Francis I issued a "Sentence given by the King against master Pierre Ramus, and the books composed by him against Aristotle." 9 Significantly, the decree not only accuses Ramus of being "temerarious, arrogant, and impudent " but castigates him for attacking "the art oflogic accepted by all nations. "10 In other words, Ramus is accused ofundermining the whole discipline. His two books are named, their destruction ordered , and their further printing forbidden. The king forbids Ramus to teach or write about either dialectic or philosophy "in any manner without our express permission." In the long history of the official suppression ofideas, this might have been merely one more forgotten episode, ifit had not been for two factors. One was the indomitable energy of Ramus, who immediately set about to circumvent the decree. The other factor, far more important as it turned out, was that Ramus had powerful friends. THE CAREER OF RAMUS Ramus's biography reveals the importance of both these factors. Born in 1515 at Cuts, in the district of Verrnandois in Picardy of a poor farmer's family, Ramus came early to Paris (at the age ofeight) and as an impoverished student had to work his way through school INTIWDUCTION 3 in a time-honored fashion as servant to richer fellows.l1 He complains that he was twice forced to leave Paris for lack of funds. At the age of twelve he entered the College de Navarre and supported himself as valet to fellow student Sieur de la Brosse. Among his classmates were Charles Bourbon, future cardinal and king, and Charles de Guise, later Cardinal of Lorraine and then Cardinal of Guise. (Charles de Guise was to become the patron ["Maecenas"] to whom Ramus later dedicated many of his books.) In I 547 Henry II became king. Following the intercession of Ramus's old schoolfellow, now Charles Cardinal ofLorraine, in that same year Henry II lifted the ban against Ramus that had been...