Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

610 E. Jennifer Ashworth
that of imitating the written texts of men who had been dead for fifteen centuries. 4
To understand the significance of these developments for the logician, we have to
consider three questions. First, how much of the medieval logic described in the
previous chapters survived? Second, insofar as medieval logic survived, were there
any interesting new developments in it? 5 Third, does humanist logic offer an
interesting alternative to medieval logic?
In Part One of this chapter I shall consider the first two questions in the context
of a historical overview in which I trace developments in logic from the later middle
ages through to 1606, the year in which the Jesuits of Coimbra published their
great commentary on Aristotle’s logical works, the Commentarii Conimbricensis
in Dialecticam Aristotelis. 6 I shall begin by considering the Aristotelian logical
corpus, the six books of the Organon, and the production of commentaries on
this work. I shall then examine the fate of the specifically medieval contributions
to logic. Finally, I shall discuss the textbook tradition, and the ways in which
textbooks changed and developed during the sixteenth century. I shall argue that
the medieval tradition in logic co-existed for some time with the new humanism,
that the sixteenth century is dominated by Aristotelianism, and that what emerged
at the end of the sixteenth century was not so much a humanist logic as a simplified
Aristotelian logic.
In Part Two of this chapter, I shall ask whether the claims made about humanist
logic and its novel contributions to probabilistic and informal logic have any
foundation. I shall argue that insofar as there is any principled discussion of such
matters, it is to be found among writers in the Aristotelian tradition.
4For its deleterious effects, see Giard, “Du latin médiéval”, p. 46. For more about the humanist
return to the past, see W. Keith Percival, “Grammar and Rhetoric in the Renaissance” in
Renaissance Eloquence. Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. James
J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 303–330, especially pp. 311–312.
See also Brian P. Copenhaver, “Translation, terminology and style in philosophical discourse” in
The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner,
and Eckhard Kessler, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 77–110, especially
pp. 104–106. For humanist innovations in logical vocabulary, see G. Nuchelmans, Late-Scholastic
and Humanist Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company,
1980), part two, passim.
5For a full account of these matters, I refer the reader to my own writings, in particular:
E.J. Ashworth, Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period (Dordrecht, Boston: D. Reidel,
1974); E. J. Ashworth, “Traditional logic” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy,
pp. 143–172; E. J. Ashworth, introduction to Robert Sanderson, Logicae Artis Compendium, ed.
E. J. Ashworth (Bologna: Editrice CLUEB, 1985), pp. XI–LV.
6An unauthorized edition appeared earlier, in 1604. The author of the logic commentary was
Sebastian de Couto.