Ramism was a collection of theories on rhetoric, logic, and pedagogy based on the teachings of Petrus Ramus, a French academic, philosopher, and Huguenot convert, who was murdered during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in August 1572.
According to British historian Jonathan Israel:
"[Ramism], despite its crudity, enjoyed vast popularity in late sixteenth-century Europe, and at the outset of the seventeenth, providing as it did a method of systematizing all branches of knowledge, emphasizing the relevance of theory to practical applications [...]"Israel, Jonathan (1995). The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477–1806 (1995), p. 582.
Development
Ramus was a cleric and professor of philosophy who gained notoriety first by his criticism of Aristotle and then by conversion to Protestantism. He was killed in the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, and a biography by Banosius (Théophile de Banos) appeared by 1576.With the posthumous Commentariorum de religione Christiana libri quatuor, nunquam antea editi (Frankfort, 1576); http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc09/htm/iv.vii.xxxiv.htm. His status as Huguenot martyr certainly had something to do with the early dissemination of his ideas. Kees Meerhoff, Rhétorique et poétique au XVIe siècle en France: Du Bellay, Ramus et les autres (1986), p. 317. His ideas had influence in some (but not all) parts of Protestant Europe, strong in Germany and the Netherlands, and on Puritan and Calvinist theologians of England, Scotland, and in the American colonies of New England, via Puritan colonists on the Mayflower.Robert Mandrou, From Humanism to Science 1480–1700 (1978 translation), p. 177.
He had little effect however on mainstream Swiss Calvinists, and was largely ignored in Catholic countries.Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (1988), pp. 51–52. The progress of Ramism in the half-century from roughly 1575 to 1625 was closely related to, and mediated by, university education: the religious factor came in through the different reception in Protestant and Catholic universities, all over Europe.Bryan S. Turner, Max Weber: Critical Responses (1999), p. 198.
Outside France, for example, there was the 1574 English translation by the Scot Roland MacIlmaine of the University of St Andrews.LLGC.org.ukWilliam Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (1962), p. 302. Ramus's works and influence then appeared in the logic textbooks of the Scottish universities, and equally he had followers in England.
Audomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon) was one early French disciple and writer on Ramism.Virginia.edu The work of Ramus gained early international attention, with Roger Ascham corresponding about him with Johann Sturm, teacher of Ramus and collaborator with Ascham; Ascham supported his stance on Joachim Perion, one early opponent, but also expressed some reservations. Later Ascham found Ramus' lack of respect for Cicero, rather than extreme proponents, just unacceptable.Lawrence V. Ryan, Roger Ascham (1963), pp. 147–8, p. 269.
As late as 1626, Francis Burgersdyk divides the logicians of his day into the Aristotelians, the Ramists and the Semi-Ramists.Michael Losonsky, Language and Logic, in Donald Rutherford (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (2006), p. 170.William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (1962), p. 305. These last endeavoured, like Rudolph Goclenius of Marburg and Amandus Polanus of Basel, to mediate between the contending parties. Ramism was closely linked to systematic Calvinism, but the hybrid Philippo-Ramism (which is where the Semi-Ramists fit in) arose as a blend of Ramus with the logic of Philipp Melanchthon.Michael Losonsky, Language and Logic, in Donald Rutherford (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (2006), p. 178.
Opposition Ramism, while in fashion, met with considerable hostility. The Jesuits were completely opposed.Marc Fumaroli, Renaissance Rhetoric: The Jesuit Case, in John W. O'Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven Harris, T. Frank Kennedy (editors), The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773 (1999), p. 91. The Calvinist Aristotelian Theodore Beza was also a strong opponent of Ramism.Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner (editors), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (1990), p. 52. Similarly the leading Lutheran Aristotelian philosopher Jakob Schegk resolutely rejected Ramus and opposed his visit to Tübingen.*Howard Hotson, Commonplace Learning: Ramism and its German Ramifications, 1543–1630 (2007) pp. 22, 102. In Heidelberg the efforts of Giulio Pace to teach Ramist dialectic to Polish private students were forbidden.Howard Hotson, Commonplace Learning: Ramism and its German ramifications, 1543–1630 (2007), p. 24; Google Books.
Where universities were open to Ramist teaching, there still could be dislike and negative reactions, stemming from the perceived personality of Ramus (arrogant, a natural polemicist), or of that of his supporters (young men in a hurry). There was tacit adoption of some of the techniques such as the epitome, without acceptance of the whole package of reform including junking Aristotle in favour of the new textbooks, and making Ramus an authoritative figure. John Rainolds at Oxford was an example of an older academic torn by the issue; his follower Richard Hooker was firmly against "Ramystry".Mordechai Feingold, pp. 289–293 in Nicholas Tyacke (editor), The History of the University of Oxford: Volume IV: Seventeenth-Century Oxford (1984).
Gerhard Johann Vossius at Leiden wrote massive works on classical rhetoric and opposed Ramism. He defended and enriched the Aristotelian tradition for the seventeenth century.George Alexander Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric & Its Christian & Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (1999), p. 254. He was a representative Dutch opponent; Ramism did not take permanent hold in the universities of the Netherlands, and once William Ames had died, it declined.Willem Frijhoff, Marijke Spies, Dutch Culture in a European Perspective (2004), p. 287.
Mid-century, Ramism was still under attack, from Cartesians such as Johannes Clauberg, who defended Aristotle against Ramus.Edward Craig, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998), p. 380.
Placing Ramism Frances Yates proposed a subtle relationship of Ramism to the legacy of Lullism, the art of memory, and Renaissance hermetism. She considers that Ramism drew on Lullism, but is more superficial; was opposed to the classical art of memory; and moved in an opposite direction to the occult (reducing rather than increasing the role of images).Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (1992 edition), pp. 234–5. He "abandoned imagery and the creative imagination".Peter French, John Dee (1972), p. 148. Mary Carruthers referred back to Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas:
"It is one of those ironies of history that Peter Ramus, who, in the sixteenth century, thought he was reacting against Aristotelianism by taking memoria from rhetoric and making it part of dialectic, was essentially remaking a move made 300 years before by two Dominican professors who were attempting to reshape memorial study in conformity with Aristotle."Carruthers, Mary (1990). The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (1990), p. 153.
An alternative to this aspect of Ramism, as belated and diminishing, is the discussion initiated by Walter Ong of Ramus in relation to several evolutionary steps. Ong's position, on the importance of Ramus as historical figure and humanist, has been summed up as the center of controversies about method (both in teaching and in scientific discovery) and about rhetoric and logic and their role in communication.Peter Sharratt, Peter Ramus, Walter Ong, and the Tradition of Humanistic Learning, Oral Tradition, 2/1 (1987) pp. 172–87, at p. 173; PDF.
The best known of Ong's theses is Ramus the post-Gutenberg writer, in other words the calibration of the indexing and schematics involved in Ramism to the transition away from written manuscripts, and the spoken word.Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977), p. 71. Extensive charts were instead used, drawing on the resources of typography, to organise material, from left to right across a printed page, particularly in theological treatises.Gordon Campbell, The Source of Bunyan's Mapp of Salvation, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 44, (1981), pp. 240–241. The cultural impact of Ramism depended on the nexus of printing (trees regularly laid out with braces) and rhetoric, forceful and persuasive at least to some Protestants; and it had partly been anticipated in cataloguing and indexing knowledge and its encyclopedism by Conrad Gesner.Mario Carpo, Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory (2001 translation), p. 110. The term Ramean tree became standard in logic books, applying to the classical Porphyrian tree, or any binary tree, without clear distinction between the underlying structure and the way of displaying it; now scholars use the clearer term Ramist epitome to signify the structure. Ong argued that, a chart being a visual aid and logic having come down to charts, the role of voice and dialogue is placed squarely and rigidly in the domain of rhetoric, and in a lower position.James Crosswhite, The Rhetoric of Reason: Writing and the Attractions of Argument (1996), p. 235.
Two other theses of Ong on Ramism are: the end of copia or profuseness for its own sake in writing, making Ramus an opponent of the Erasmus of Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style; and the beginning of the later Cartesian emphasis on clarity. Ong, though, consistently argues that Ramus is thin, insubstantial as a scholar, a beneficiary of fashion supported by the new medium of printing, as well as a transitional figure.Alan Richardson, Ellen Spolsky, The Work of Fiction: Cognition, Culture, and Complexity (2004), p. 121.
These ideas, from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, have been reconsidered. Brian Vickers summed up the view a generation or so later: dismissive of Yates, he notes that bracketed tables existed in older manuscripts, and states that Ong's emphases are found unconvincing. Further, methodus, the Ramists' major slogan, was specific to figures of speech, deriving from Hermogenes of Tarsus via George of Trebizond. And the particular moves used by Ramus in the reconfiguration of rhetoric were in no sense innovative by themselves.Brian Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (1988), note p. 65, and pp. 475–7. Lisa Jardine agrees with Ong that he was not a first-rank innovator, more of a successful textbook writer adapting earlier insights centred on topics-logic, but insists on his importance and influence in humanistic logic. She takes the Ramean tree to be a "voguish" pedagogic advance.Lisa Jardine, Humanistic Logic, p. 184–6, in Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner (editors), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (1990), p. 52.
It has been said that:
Puritans believed the maps proved well suited to rationalize and order the Christian view of revealed truth and the language and knowledge of the new learning, specifically the scientific and philosophical paradigms arising out of the Renaissance.Douglas McKnight, Schooling, the Puritan Imperative, and the Molding of an American National Identity: Education's "errand Into the Wilderness" (2003), p. 53.
Disciplines and demarcations Donald R. Kelley writes of the "new learning" (nova doctrina) or opposition in Paris to traditional scholasticism as a "trivial revolution", i.e. growing out of specialist teachers of the trivium. He argues that: