Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

628 E. Jennifer Ashworth
his introduction that he had written the work because of the absence of a suitable
text for the instruction of the young. 93 Aristotle was too difficult, Agricola
had deliberately restricted himself to the subject of invention, and Melanchthon’s
style was not suited to elementary teaching. He added that he hoped through
his efforts to make Aristotle more accessible to the young. In the first edition of
his work he dealt only with that part of logic called judgement, though, in the
editions of 1568 and later, a brief fourth Book on invention, based on Agricola’s
first Book, was to be added, along with annotations by Peter Carter. The fourth
Book was somewhat redundant, since Seton had already given Agricola’s classification
of the Topics in his second Book. There are frequent references to Agricola
throughout the work, as well as to Cicero, Quintilian and Erasmus. However, he
did include the bulk of traditional Aristotelian logic from the categories to the
syllogism, which he described as the most important part of judgement, 94 and he
also retained the strictly medieval doctrine of the supposition of terms, though in a
considerably truncated form. 95 It is interesting to compare Seton’s text to Robert
Sanderson’s Logicae Artis Compendium which appeared at Oxford in 1615, and
was to remain a standard text there well into the eighteenth century. 96 This too
contains a full outline of strictly Aristotelian logic, together with brief discussions
of the medieval doctrines of supposition, exponibles and consequences, and a full
discussion of method as a way of ordering discourse. Both these works offer the
student a compendium of simple logical devices for use in formal debate, as well
as a “guide to analyzing a Cicero oration or a passage from Ovid.” 97
No account of logic in the sixteenth century would be complete without some
reference to Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée), the most notorious logician of
the period. He is known both for his attacks on Aristotle and for the simplified
logic presented in his Dialectique of 1555, which was published in Latin in 1556 as
Dialecticae libri duo. TheDialectique had two parts. The first, on invention, covered
the Topics, and the second, on judgement, presented a deliberately simplified
version of the syllogism followed by an account of method as a means of ordering
in the arts and sciences. The Topics are presented in an Agricolan way, without
maxims, and with a new theoretical foundation. They are not merely useful headings
for gathering material, but they represent the mind’s natural organization of
data. 98 As such, Topics function as categories; 99 and indeed, Ramus emphasized
that his Topics are more useful and more natural than Aristotle’s ten Categories.
If we are asked to discuss war, peace or the state, it is no use to think in terms of
93 John Seton, Dialectica (Londini, 1545), sig. A ii v.
94 Seton, Dialectica, sig. I ii r.
95 Seton, Dialectica, sig. E iv r– v v.
96 See Ashworth, introduction to Sanderson, Logicae Artis Compendium, pp. XIII–XVI.
97 L. Jardine, “The Place of Dialectic Teaching in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge,” Studies in
the Renaissance 21 (1974), 57. Jardine is referring only to Seton.
98 See, for instance, Petrus Ramus, Scholarum dialecticarum seu animadversionum in Organum
Aristotelis, inScholae in tres primas liberales artes (Frankfurt 1581; repr. Frankfurt am Main
1965), p. 54. Agricola suggests the same thought: De Inventione Dialectica, p.9.
99 Ramus, Scholarum Dialecticarum, pp. 118–119.