Three - Two Renaissance Traditions: Ciceronian and Augustinian

Summary

Renaissance teachers of logic loved Cicero and Augustine more than Abelard and Peter of Spain. They preferred the eclectic and practical values of the Romans over the medieval tendency to high formalism. The humanists of Renaissance Europe appreciated the earthy optimism evident in the following from Cicero:

[Dialectic] extends widely over all aspects of knowledge. This is the branch of learning that defines and classifies, draws logical consequences, formulates conclusions, and distinguishes the true from the false. In other words, it is the art and science of reasoning: which is not only supremely useful for evaluating arguments of all kinds but also offers its devotees a noble satisfaction which merits the name of wisdom.

Committed to teaching the practical wisdom of evaluating all kinds of arguments, Renaissance textbooks revived discussion of testimony and authority in two ways. The first was classical with an emphasis on the Ciceronian. Rudolphus Agricola and Petrus Ramus were the two most influential figures in this tradition. The second was classical but also eclectically Augustinian. The latter followed the way Augustine drew epistemology, psychology, and theology into a dialectic that served Christianity. Philipp Melanchthon was the most influential figure in this tradition. The art of handling testimony and authority was promoted in both traditions.

AGRICOLA AND RAMUS REVIVE CLASSICAL TOPICS

Rudolphus Agricola Phrisius (1444–1485) wrote the first major Renaissance logic textbook: De Inventione Dialectica. Circulating in manuscript after the 1470s and first published in Louvain in 1515, it gained enormous influence in the 1520s and ’30s. By 1569, Petrus Ramus wrote that “thanks to Agricola the true study of genuine logic had first been established in Germany and thence, by way of its disciples and emulators, had spread through the whole world.” Lisa Jardine, even though noting that the published version of the book was probably a result of “collaborative editing” and its fame an aspect of a pedagogic myth created by Erasmus, describes De Inventione Dialectica as the logic textbook “most widely specified, bought, and used in schools and universities throughout Protestant Europe, between the early decades of the sixteenth century and the mid seventeenth century.” Jardine warns against placing too much weight on De Inventione Dialectica as the source of the new Renaissance emphasis on classical dialectic; but we are not too concerned here with the sources of ideas. Textbooks are rarely such sources.