Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

Developments in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 635
in the Categories, propositions were discussed in the Perihermenias, syllogisms in
general were discussed in the Prior Analytics, and then the three kinds of syllogism
were discussed in the Posterior Analytics, Topics, andSophistici Elenchi, in that
order. This arrangement, however, gave rise to some criticism, particularly from
Petrus Ramus. He attacked on two fronts. His first target was the division given
by Averroes, and championed by Zabarella. 127 Averroes had divided Aristotle’s
logic into general or universal logic, which was contained in the first three books
of the Organon, and three special logics, apodictic, probable, and sophistic, which
were contained in the last three books. Ramus argued in his Scholae Dialecticae
that the list of three special logics was unacceptable, partly because the study of
sophistical reasoning was no more a part of logic than the study of barbarisms and
solecisms was a part of grammar, and partly because the Posterior Analytics and
the Topics were themselves both general in their application. 128 They applied to
any epistemological material, and there was only one general doctrine applying to
terms, sentences, syllogisms, and method. Of course there is a difference between
apodictic, dialectic and sophistic propositions, but affirmation and negation are
just as much features of propositions as are truth and falsehood, necessary and
probable truth, and the former are not elevated into divisions of logic as such. Nor
do we say that the Perihermenias is divided into necessary, true-seeming and captious,
even though propositions are. 129 Thus there is one logic or dialectic, and it
is the art of discourse. 130 Ramus is assuming that indeed formal deductive structures
are what counts in argumentation, and that the mistake of his opponents lay
only in their supposition that the application of these structures to different kinds
of material would produce different kinds of logic.
Ramus’s second target had to do with the application of the division between
invention and judgement or dispositio, as he frequently called it, to the books of
the Organon. This was not a new issue. For instance, in the thirteenth-century
Topics commentary ascribed to Robert Kilwardby the author writes that insofar
as inventio comes before the judgement of what is found, the Topics and the Sophistici
elenchi should come before the Prior and Posterior Analytics, but insofar
as the syllogism as such comes before the demonstrative syllogism, and the demonstrative
syllogism before the dialectical, and the dialectical before the sophistical
syllogism, the Prior Analytics should be followed by the Posterior Analytics, Topics
and Sophistici elenchi in that order. He felt that Aristotle approved the second
ordering. 131 For both Rudolph Agricola and Petrus Ramus it seemed obvious that
invention should precede judgement, and this arrangement became a hallmark of
Ramist textbooks, though not of those textbooks that retained traditional Aristotelian
material. The issue was discussed by other authors, including the Coimbra
127 Zabarella, De natura logicae, col.51ff.
128 Ramus, Scholarum Dialecticarum, pp. 38–42, p. 61.
129 Ramus, Scholarum Dialecticarum, pp. 60–61.
130 Ramus, Scholarum Dialecticarum, pp. 36–37.
131 Olga Weijers, “Le commentaire sur les “Topiques” d’Aristote attribué à Robert Kilwardby
(ms. Florence, B.N.C., Conv. Soppr. B.4.1618)”, Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica
Medievale 6 (1995), p. 126.