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  • Autour de Ramus: le combat
  • Ian Maclean
Autour de Ramus: le combat. Études réunies et présentées par Kees Meerhoff et Jean-Claude Moisan avec la collaboration de Michel Magnien . Paris, Champion. 2005. 491 pp. Hb €51.00.

In the case of some of the contributions to this collection (of which I shall only discuss those which deal with France), the word 'autour' of the title should be taken in its most literal sense; they are only peripherally to do with Ramus and the polemics around his work, although not without interest in themselves. André Robinet's contribution is a dense analysis of place, space and extension in Descartes in the context of Aristotelian thought, with a brief afterword about Ramus on the same topic. Catherine Magnien convincingly shows that Pasquier's famous letter to Ramus on French orthography is antedated; Jean-Eudes Girot discusses Pierre Perpinien's attempt to implicate Ramus in the resistance in 1566 to Jesuit teaching in Paris; François Rigolot links Montaigne's changing reactions to Aristotle to the cultural politics of the reign of Henri III. Judith Rice Henderson's full and interesting account of the development of Muret's thought on education begins with a timely reminder (not heeded by all the other contributors) that scholars sometimes change their minds, that commentaries can reveal as much about the intellectual positions adopted by their authors as polemic, and that disagreement does not necessarily arise from personal animosity: a point also made in Marc van der Poel's discussion of Turnèbe's attack on Ramus's treatment of Cicero's orations. Kees Meerhoff's thorough study of the life, milieu and writings [End Page 89] of the neglected and misrepresented figure of Pierre Galland argues mainly from internal and circumstantial evidence that he is a 'mélanchthonien masqué' who shares the 'Christian anthropology' of the praeceptor Germaniae, and is an important contribution to the understanding of Parisian academic life in the middle years of the sixteenth century. Cesare Vasoli and Peter Sharratt address texts by Ramus directly, the former providing a lucid enarratio of the Animadversiones aristotelicae, the latter producing an edition of the surviving Ramist argumenta on Aristotle's politics. More general points are made in three contributions: the introduction identifies the two main causes of the violent reaction which Ramus provoked (his intemperate invective against hallowed authorities of antiquity, especially Aristotle, Cicero and Euclid, and the appeal of his method to students,which contemporaries saw as an irresponsible simplification of complex philosophical and literary issues). Guido Oldrini surveys Ramus's polemical strategies and the diverse reception of his works across Europe and Christian Strom argues from an examination of Reformed (non-Genevan) Theology and the Jurisprudence of the German lands that an important factor in the appeal of Ramism was its relevance to the anxieties caused by the breakdown of the coherent social, religious and political world of the later Middle Ages, and the desire to re-establish a sense of order. In all, a very useful addition to Ramist studies.

Ian Maclean
All Souls College, Oxford
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