Humanism and The Teaching of Logic: The Humanists' Reassessment of The Study of Language

43
HUMANISM AND THE TEACHING OF

LOGIC
The humanists' reassessment of the study of language

The traditional account of the impact of humanism on the logic cur-
riculum blames the supposed 'barbarousness' of the mediaeval logicians'
use of language for the humanists' hostility to the logic of the traditional
curriculum. In their standard history of logic the Kneales wrote:
The first blow to the prestige of logic came from the humanists, or classical
scholars, of the Renaissance, i.e. in the fifteenth century. Their objection to
scholasticism, and to medieval logic in particular, was not that it was false in any
details, but rather that it was barbarous in style and unattractive in content by
contrast with the rediscovered literature of antiquity. Who but a dullard would
devote his life to the proprietates terminorum when he might read the newly found
poem of Lucretius De Return Natura or learn Greek and study Plato?1
According to this account, a commitment to eloquence as the basis for all
learning led humanists to turn from logic, the study of the technical
manipulation of a formal language, to rhetoric:
The writing of elegant Latin was now the chief accomplishment to be learnt, and
for this Cicero and Quintilian were the authorities. From them the men of the
Renaissance acquired the Roman attitude to scholarship, with the result that
genuine logic was neglected for rhetoric and books which purported to be on logic
quoted Cicero as often as Aristotle.2
In actual fact, the shift of interest amongst humanist students of language
derived from different motives. And what is masked by the so-called
'rhetoricisation' of logic by humanist teachers is a more far-reaching
reassessment of the study of language as part of a general arts education.
The humanist most closely associated with such a reassessment, and whose
influence is to be found in most subsequent humanist work on dialectic, is
Lorenzo Valla (1407-57).
1. Kneale 1962, p. 300.

2. Ibid.
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798 The defeat, neglect, and revival of scholasticism
Lorenzo Valla and the revival of dialectic

Valla was a grammarian whose view of language was coloured by his
commitment to consuetudo (the established linguistic usage of the great
Roman authors of antiquity) as the standard for eloquent Latin. The study
of grammar in the curriculum ought, he maintained, to be based on Latin
usage in the period of its fullest currency as a living language, and ought to
be regulatively descriptive, rather than prescriptive.3 In his most influential
work, the Elegantiae linguae Latinae libri sex (written around 1444), Valla
showed how the precise use of Latin can be decided by careful reference to
classical quotations in which the appropriate lexical item figures; usage
legislates for future employment of the Latin language.
Valla's emphasis on consuetudo as the ultimate arbiter in the study of
language led him to a drastic reassessment of the study of dialectic in the
curriculum, which he put forward in his Dialecticae disputationes (written in
1439).4 The major part of actual argumentation and controversy, Valla
maintained, is concerned not with certainty (that area of ratiocination
appropriately systematised in formal syllogistic as traditionally taught), but
with persuasion and probability.5 Here the central issue is not whether the
conclusion of the argument has been validly inferred from the premisses; it
might be, instead, how tellingly the position taken up by an orator is
supported by evidence and testimony prior to the formation of a valid chain
of arguments; or it might be how convincingly the speaker discriminates
by choice of supporting material and citation of authorities between two
3. An eloquent statement of this point of view is to be found in an early work by Juan Luis Vives, an
enthusiastic follower of Valla. In his Adversus pseudodialeclicos (1782-90), [.42, he writes (1519):
' "Homo est albus" is a Latin sentence not because grammar makes it so (any more than rhetorical
figures impart splendor and refinement to speaking because rhetoric decrees it), but rather
because the Roman people, who spoke true Latin, judged that sentence to be Latin. Therefore the
grammarian does not decree that this is Latin, but he teaches that it is; and it is because certain
figures of speech seemed beautiful and fine to speakers that rhetoric diligently observed and
handed them on.' The translation is from Guerlac 1979, p. 57. Valla's Elegantiae in its entirety is an
example of this approach to Latin usage.
4. On Valla see in particular Di Napoli 1971, Camporeale 1972, and Adorno 1954. On the various
versions of the Dialecticae disputationes and their dates of completion, see also Zippel 1957. Zippel
gives the first printed edition of the Dialecticae disputationes as 1509, but Risse 1965 lists two
editions for 1499. See alsojardine 1977.
5. A succinct statement of this position on dialectic is given by another disciple of Valla's, Rudolph
Agricola. In his De inventione dialectica he writes (ca. 1480): 'Exigua enim portio eorum [huma-
norum studiorum] quae discimus, certa et immota est, adeoque si Academiae credimus, hoc solum
scimus, quod nihil scimus. Certe pleraque, pro cuiusque ingenio, ut accommodatissime ad
probandum quisque excogitare potuerit, alio atque alio trahuntur' (Agricola 1539, p. 2).
Humanism and the teaching of logic 799
widely held views. And it may be that coercive strategies such as sorites6 or
dilemma,1 whose inferential status is dubious, play as great a part as reliable
syllogistic inference in driving an opponent in debate to a desired
conclusion.8
Although such considerations had traditionally found their way into the
curriculum of the schools under the heading of rhetoric or sophistic, Valla
argued that they rightly belonged in dialectic, not simply as subsidiary
instruction, but as the very core of the study. He adduced the oratorical
texts of Cicero and Quintilian (in particular the Institutio oratoria of the
latter, which had recently been recovered in its entirety through the efforts
of humanist scholars)9 to support this view. Concerned as these authors
were with ratiocination in the context of the law-courts, they tackled the
practical problems of instruction in proving one's case where certain proof
was unlikely to be available and putting a convincing case was a serious
option.10
The effect and influence of Valla's revisions in dialectic
This was the thinking which prompted Valla's revisions in dialectic. Their
effect, in terms of traditional teaching, was to shift the focus of the cur-
riculum away from syllogistic and its associated analysis of terms which
facilitates the formal employment of terms in syllogisms. Instead, the
theory of the Topics became the centre of the course. As developed by the
Roman orators and systematised in Boethius' De topicis differentiis,*' the
theory of the Topics provided a system of classification for oratorical
material according to its appropriateness for a range of strategies used in
6. Sorites is the 'heap' or acervus argument, which proceeds by small, unobjectionable steps to a
controversial conclusion. It takes its name from the case in which an interlocutor accepts a mound
of sand as a 'heap', and is then asked to decide at which point it ceases to be a heap if the grains are
withdrawn one by one. Seejardine 1977, pp. 161-2.
7. Dilemma or anlestrephon is another technically undecidable form, of which the most celebrated
example is probably the one attributed to Bion in Aulus Gellius' Nodes Allicae. The man who
argues for celibacy urges, 'You are sure to marry a woman who is beautiful or ugly; if she is
beautiful you will share her; if she is ugly she will be a trial to you.' The uxorious man retaliates: 'If
I marry a beautiful woman she will not be a trial to me; if an ugly one I alone shall possess her'
(Nodes Atticae V.xi. 1 -14).
8. See Hamblin 1970 for a modern attempt to derive a formal logic of question and answer from
strategies such as these.
9. Quintilian's Institutio oratoria had been available only in mutilated form until Poggio discovered a
complete manuscript at Saint Gall in 1416. See Reynolds and Wilson 1974, p. 121. See also
Sabbadini 1905. On Valla's work on the newly recovered text see Winterbottom 1967, esp.
pp. 356ft". On Valla's textual activities see Gaeta 1955.
10. See Michel i960.
11. On Boethius and the theory of the Topics in antiquity see Stump 1978.
debating, of which the syllogism was only one. Even a single example will
help to show the potentially greater flexibility of this focus on the Topics.
The extrinsic Topic from the greater,11 under which are classified pro-
positions of the form 'a is greater than b\ provides the orator with
arguments of the form 'a is greater than b; b is greater than c; therefore a is
greater than c', which although entirely reliable is nevertheless unavailable
to those confined to syllogistic argument.
During the fifty years after Valla completed his Dialecticae disputationes
there is evidence of its being given serious consideration by Aristotelian
logicians.'3 But it was not until the early decades of the sixteenth century
that Valla's humanist dialectic came into its own as a serious competitor
with traditional Aristotelian logic within the traditional teaching establish-
ments of Europe. Its appearance in university records correlates closely
with the introduction into those universities of programmes in classical
reading and the study of Greek and Roman eloquence which in the early
decades of the sixteenth century transformed the arts courses of the nor-
thern European universities. Having been a technical introduction to the
linguistic tools needed for solving problems in philosophy and theology,
the arts course became a general introduction to Latin and Greek language
and literature for students destined for professional careers.14 The textbook
which we find displacing Peter of Spain and Paul of Venice as the introduc-
tion to dialectic within these programmes is the De inventione dialectica of
Rudolph Agricola (1444-85),I5 which plainly advocates Valla's approach
to dialectic.
Rudolph Agricola's De inuentione dialectica

In 1523 Zasius wrote to Amerbach that at his university of Freiburg, 'Peter
of Spain has disappeared, all of logic has disappeared, except that which
some profess from Melanchthon's little works, some from the books of
Rudolph Agricola.' I6 In 1531 a visitation at the University of Tubingen
reported that Agricola was being studied by the 'modemi' in place of the set
12. See Boethius, De topicis differentiis, PL 64,1190D, for his discussion of'greater than' and 'less than'.
13. On the importance of Valla's dialectic see Vasoli 1968a, Jardine 1977, Kristeller 1972, p. 145,
and 1964, pp. 33—5. Agostino Nifo's Dialectica ludicra (1520) invokes Valla's dialectic as a matter of
course (as it appears), as representing an opposed, 'grammatical' approach to dialectic. He quotes
him verbatim without acknowledgement throughout this work and its companion volume,
Epitomata rethorica ludicra, published in the same year. See Jardine forthcoming.
14. On the changing function of the arts course in education see Stelling-Michaud 1967, pp. 71-142.
On the changed role of Oxford and Cambridge in this period see Stone 1975.
15. On Agricola see Vasoli 1968a, pp. 147-82; Howell 1961; Gilbert i960; and Ong 1958a.
16. Amerbach Korrespondenz II, Ep. 923, pp. 429-31, cited in Guerlac 1979, p. 24.
text, Peter of Spain's Tractates.11 By the 1530s revisions to existing statutes

for the northern universities replace the traditional scholastic manual for
the arts course with Agricola's De inventione diakctica or a humanist dia-
lectic manual derivative from it. Henry VIH's 1535 injunctions for Oxford
and Cambridge stipulate that students in arts should learn their dialec-
tic from 'the purest authors', including Rudolph Agricola and Philip
Melanchthon, rather than from scholastic texts.18 Of the five college
lecturers out of a total of nine appointed to the task of dialectic instruction
in the 1560 statutes for Trinity College, Cambridge, one was to lecture on
Agricola - the only 'modern' text specified.19
Between 1515 and 1590 Agricola's De inventione dialectica went through
at least 35 editions, not including epitomes of the work designed explicitly
for the classroom. Latomus' epitome alone went through 13 editions
between 1530 and 1575.20 It was followed by a spate of textbooks closer in
format to traditional texts (and therefore more readily incorporated into
existing teaching programmes), with Agricolan emphasis on the theory of
the Topics, the priority of discovery (inventio), understood as the selection
and organisation of material, over confirmation (iudicium), understood
as the deployment of such material syllogistically or persuasively, and
ratiocinative strategies other than the syllogism. Most prominent amongst
these were the textbooks of Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Caesarius, and
Peter Ramus.
Melanchthon and Caesarius

Melanchthon (1497-1560)21 produced a number of teaching texts in
dialectic, co-ordinated with his programme for the humanist education of
reformed Christians. Between 1520 and the turn of the century these went
through a staggering ninety-one editions.22 His Erotemata dialectices
(1547)23 preserves the key characteristics of Agricola's and Valla's dia-
lectical approach. It provides an attenuated treatment of syllogistic, which
is not allowed an important place in the text as a whole. Treatment of the
predicables and categories is minimised (doing little more than familiarise
17. Teufel 1977, p. 80. See also Heath 1971.

18. Simula academiae Cantabrigiensis (Cambridge, 1785), pp. 137—8.
19. Mullinger 1884, appendix to vol. II. See alsojardine 1974 and 1976.
20. All these figures are taken from Risse 1965. Sec also Ong 1958b.
21. For biographical details see Vasoli 1968a, pp. 278—309.
22. Risse 1965, passim.
23. On the chronology of Melanchthon's various texts on dialectic see Vasoli 1968a. The first was the
Compendiosa dialectices ratio (1520).
the student with the terminology), demonstration gets cursory treatment,

and there is a bare reference to the parva logicalia, the treatises presenting the
innovations of terminist logic, with the statement that all the problems the
parva logicalia are supposed to tackle are the province of the grammarian
and do not arise at all if the precepts of grammar are carefully applied.24
The same pattern is followed by Caesarius (1467-15 50) in his Dialectica
(1532),25 which matched Melanchthon's in popularity, and confirmed the
position of Agricolan dialectic at the heart of the curriculum.26 Both
Caesarius' Dialectica and one of Melanchthon's manuals were in use at the
University of Wittenberg in the 1530s.27
Peter Ramus
But the 'best-seller' amongst dialectic texts was undoubtedly that of the
infamous Peter Ramus, 28 whose calibre as a traditional logician in the
medieval mould has been queried by historians of logic ever since W. J.
Ong's work on the popularity and influence of his Dialectica brought him
to their attention.29 Ramus (1515-72) was trained at the College de
Navarre of the University of Paris during the late 1520s,30 a crucial period
for the teaching of dialectic in the University. The introduction of
Agricola's De inventione dialectica into the dialectic course at Paris is gener-
ally dated from 1529, when Sturm came to the city. Latomus was also
teaching in Paris in 1533.31 Two editions of Agricola's work appeared
from the Paris presses in 1529.32 Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540),33 who had
24. Erotemata dialectica (Wittenberg 1555), p. 418: 'Addita est Aristotelis Dialecticae doctrina, uerius
Grammatica quam Dialectica, quam nominarunt parua logicalia, in qua dum praecepta im-
modice cumularunt, et labyrinthos inextricablies, sine aliqua utilitate finxerunt
25. For biographical details see Vasoli 1968a, p. 260. For the widespread influence of both
Melanchthon's and Caesarius' dialectic texts see Risse 1964, pp. 25—31 and 79-121.
26. Both Caesarius and Melanchthon acknowledge their debt to Agricola. See Caesarius, Dialectica
(1568), f. 8r. See Vasoli 1968a, passim, for additional evidence of Agricola's direct influence on
later dialecticians.
27. See Caesarius 1559, preface (dated 1532):'... intellexeram Dialecticam meam uel qualemcunque
ipsius Philippi [Melanchthonis] cura et subornatione publice nunc praelegi atque doceri in
Academia Vuittenbergensi'.
28. See Vasoli 1968a, pp. 333-589 passim; Ong 1958a and 1958b.
29. See most recently Ashworth 1974.
30. See Ong 1958a.
31. The evidence for Sturm's having actually introduced Agricola to Paris is rather vague. Lefranc
1893 attributes this statement to Schmidt 185 5, pp. 120-1. It may, therefore, reflect the prejudice
of a biographer of Sturm. There is, however, no doubt that Sturm's and Latomus' arrival in Paris
ensured widespread dissemination of Agricolan dialectic at Paris, whether or not it had preceded
them there.
32. Ong 1958a, p. 96.
33. On Vives see Guerlac 1979; Vasoli 1968a, pp. 214-46.
studied scholastic logic intensively under Gaspar Lax at the College de

Montaigu, between 1509 and 1512, had produced his Adversus pseudodialec-
ticos in 1519.34 This highly polemical little work outspokenly attacked the
entire tradition of scholastic logic, rejecting it in favour of a humanistic
study of usage and everyday ratiocination as pioneered by Valla and
Agricola.35 In this atmosphere Ramus set about a ruthless reduction and
schematisation of Agricolan dialectic to produce an all-purpose, accessible,
and undemanding introduction to the tools necessary for 'clear thinking'.
If Valla and Agricola had pioneered the reform of dialectic instruction,
Ramus pioneered popular education: his manuals were designed for the
humblest members of the intellectual community.
Ramus was probably the last of the dialectical innovators to have been
trained both in the scholastic tradition and in the 'Ciceronian' tradition of
the new humanist arts schools. Much of the 'ignorance' and 'uncouthness'
of which Ramist dialectic is accused stemmed from the fact that his texts
fell into the hands of students who had received no systematic introduction
to traditional Aristotelian logic. There is some evidence that scholastic
manuals lingered on in the universities in the latter half of the sixteenth
century because teachers found it necessary to provide some genuine
formal logic to support the humanist programme. 36
Ramus was involved in a programme of reform of the entire arts pro-
gramme at Paris and produced textbooks which achieved great vogue in
each subject of the curriculum (and also in such new subjects as vernacular
grammar). He contended that the oratorical focus of a vocational arts
course (no longer a technical training for clerics and teachers, but a higher
education for a literate laity) called for simplification in the teaching of
dialectic. Most specifically (and this emphasis is already to be found in the
writings of Vives and Melanchthon),37 the arts training was now directed
towards ethics, civics, and politics (the active sciences of the professional
man), in which areas opinion and persuasive discourse had traditionally
34. See Guerlac 1979.

35. 'Aristotle did not define even the smallest rule in his entire dialectic so that it would not conform
to the same meaning of Greek speech that scholars and children and women and all the common
people used. For a dialectician does not fashion and transmit a new meaning of language, but
teaches rules taken from that old and familiar meaning.' Opera, p. 53, translated Guerlac 1979,
P-79-
36. See McConica 1979. McConica records the persistence of scholastic manuals alongside humanist
manuals, and suggests that an eclectic pedagogy allowed both to be used.
37. Melanchthon argues energetically in his Erotemata dialectices that there is room for the study of
dialectic as part of an education directed at the spiritual and moral welfare of the Christian
individual. All his examples of logical argument are taken from ethical and scriptural questions.
held sway. For such studies a systematic logic of plausibility or probability

(what may be argued as reasonable with the majority of reasonable men) is
not merely an indulgence, but a necessity.
Like his predecessors in humanist logic, Ramus took as his fundamental
distinction in logic the division into inventio and iudicium. Cicero,
Quintilian, and Boethius provided the precedent for his move, which by
now was the hallmark of a humanist dialectical approach. Ramus used
grammatical well-formedness as the unique test of the appropriateness of a
proposition for dialectical use (any well-formed, affirmative proposition is
'true' for his purposes), thus stressing the contingent nature of the study as
he envisages it. He taught only an abbreviated list of Topics as the means of
classifying dialectical material; these Topics (as in Boethius) serve as a
checklist for the strategies of argument appropriate to the material stored
under any one head. He curtailed discussion of the syllogism and entirely
ignored the logica moderna. And he introduced method as the rallying point
for his aggressively simplified programme of instruction, using 'method'
to designate all the accumulated strategies for organising units of discourse
in blocks larger than single syllogisms.
Ramus appears to have imagined that a dichotomous key, arranging the
major propositions relating to any of the arts in descending order of
generality, would provide a grid enabling teacher or student to display
everything relevant to that art (including complex argumentation) in a
way that would guarantee clarity and completeness.38 In practice, in the
Ramist handbooks which multiplied in the later sixteenth century, this
Ramist method became a crude and restrictive device for running over the
subject matter of a syllabus, or a clumsy mnemonic device for rote recall in
extemporaneous speaking. It is probably fair to say that the protracted
discussions of Ramist method as the solution for all the intellectual ills of
the later sixteenth century represent the lowest ebb of the pioneering
reforms of the humanists. But it should be remembered that this pedagogic
aberration does not represent the entire achievement of humanist thinking
on dialectic.
The function of the humanist textbooks

A good deal of the manoeuvring which takes place within humanist texts
on dialectic is a direct consequence of their function - to provide elemen-
tary instruction in the art of discourse for students enrolled in an arts course
38. On Ramist method see Ong 1958a, Gilbert i960, and Jardine 1974.
with an increasingly humanistic bias. In all of them philosophical questions

are subordinated to pragmatic concerns. Check-lists to simplify standard
procedures for selecting material pertinent to a theme and arguing con-
sistently to a desired conclusion figure prominently. Latomus' successful
epitome of Agricola's De inventione dialectica (a much more discursive
work) is a striking example of the way in which the dialectic manual of the
1530s and thereafter is expected to be a pocket blueprint for successful
performance in set disputations. The object of the text is unashamedly to
enable the student to make the appropriate debating moves; the only
criterion for preferring one strategy to another is its effectiveness in
polemic. From the point of view of the historian of logic, it no longer
makes very good sense when considering these manuals to isolate treat-
ment of a traditional section like the categories in order to assess the
humanist dialectician's intellectual contribution to it: he makes of it only as
much as will carry his student to the next heading in his survey course. In
this respect a recent historian of logic is correct in saying that the humanist
dialecticians 'perverted the purpose of scholastic logic, which was also to
teach, but to teach a developed formal logic rather than the art of thinking
clearly'.39
Summary and conclusion

We may summarise the changes in dialectic teaching brought about by the
impact of humanistic studies on the arts course as follows. In the early
decades of the sixteenth century, across northern Europe, we find the
introductory arts course being adapted to meet the requirements of an
influx of students from the professional classes.40 Within this arts course,
with its humanist predilection for Greek and Latin eloquence, and legal
and ethical instruction, there was an acknowledged need for some rigorous
underpinning of instruction in 'clear thinking'. But the meticulous intro-
duction to formal logic and semantic theory provided by the scholastic
programme came to look increasingly unsuitable for this purpose.
One should, however, add that where the introductory arts course
continued to be the preliminary stage in a programme directed toward the
39. Ashworth 1974a, p. 9.

40. It is becoming increasingly clear that despite a certain inertia in the statutes, humanist texts began
to be studied in arts courses throughout northern Europe in the early decades of the sixteenth
century, as study of book inventories of students, commonplace books, and teachers' lecture notes
proves. See Curtis 1959 for the persisting discrepancy between statute requirements and the books
students actually studied and owned. See also jardine 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, and forthcoming;
also Kearney 1970.
study of philosophy and theology, scholastic logic continued to be taught

with its traditional rigour. This was the case at the universities of southern
Europe such as Padua, with its thriving philosophy faculty, and Bologna,
with its sophisticated medical school.41 Humanist studies in the Italian
universities became assimilated into what had always been a thriving
grammar course.42 Aristotelian logicians teaching in the Italian universities
show themselves aware of the alternative programme in practical dia-
lectic,43 and sometimes wrote elementary manuals suitable for a humanist
course, while concentrating most of their attention on the enduring
scholastic tradition.44 One might even suggest that contact with the
humanists' emphasis on the Topics led some of these logicians to introduce
fruitful and original treatments of Topics into their formal and philo-
sophical treatises.45
What was needed in the way of dialectic for the humanist arts course was
a simple introduction to the analysis and use of ordinary language (elegant
Latin) for formal debating and clear thinking. Such an analysis was pro-
vided in the 'alternative' dialectics deriving from the work of Valla and
Agricola. These were committed to 'plausibility' as the measure of success-
ful argumentation. Their authors impressively argued the case for giving
serious consideration to non-syllogistic forms of argument, and strategies
which support or convince rather than prove, as an intrinsic part of the 'art
of discourse'.
In practice, the pedagogues working from the innovatory treatises of
Valla and Agricola tended to discard those earlier authors' intellectual
justifications for their refocused textbooks. But they stuck faithfully to
the selection of subjects for treatment to which those authors had
given emphasis. Thus Caesarius and Melanchthon both give space to non-
syllogistic sorites in their textbooks, although they give no indication why
41. On the school of Padua see Randall 1940, reprinted in Randall 1961. Fora full bibliography see
Schmitt 1971.
42. See Rashdall 1936,1, 92, for an account of this fundamental difference between the structures of
the arts courses north and south of the Alps.
43. Nifo, Zimara, and Zabarella all allude to the humanist programme, and sometimes appear to
incorporate some of the devices (particularly for presentation) from those courses in their more
traditional treatises. For an account of the close contact between humanism and the enduring
Aristotelianism at Padua see Poppi 1970 and Vasoli 1968b.
44. See Nifo's Dialectica ludicra, which in many ways deviates from traditional Aristotelianism in its
selection of topics and presentation. See also the Tabulae logicae by Zabarella, printed at the end of
his Opera logica.
45. This may well be the case with Nifo, whose commentary on Aristotle's Topics, widely used in the
sixteenth century, incorporates many non-Aristotelian attitudes towards the use and flexibility of
the teaching of the Topics. See Ashworth 1976b.
this topic is of peculiar interest to them.46 They also tend to be extremely

sketchy on just those traditional areas of logic in which the historian of
logic is particularly interested. This may well be because there already
existed a body of standard textbooks of quality in these areas, to which the
student could be referred. There has not yet been an adequate study of the
intellectual contribution of the humanist dialecticians on the issues with
which they are particularly concerned, such as extended argumentation
over units larger than the syllogism, or coercive forms of argument.47
Until such a study is made, we shall not be in a position to decide whether
the humanist intervention in the history of logic represents a decisive
impoverishment or a possible enrichment of the tradition.
46. Sorites is allowed a heading to itself, although no attempt is made at more than a description of the
argument form.
47. The work of Vasoli, Ho well, and Gilbert is in the end too descriptive to make much headway.

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43

HUMANISM AND THE TEACHING OF

The humanists' reassessment of the study of language

1. Kneale 1962, p. 300.

Lorenzo Valla and the revival of dialectic

Rudolph Agricola's De inuentione dialectica

text, Peter of Spain's Tractates.11 By the 1530s revisions to existing statutes

Melanchthon and Caesarius

17. Teufel 1977, p. 80. See also Heath 1971.

the student with the terminology), demonstration gets cursory treatment,

studied scholastic logic intensively under Gaspar Lax at the College de

34. See Guerlac 1979.

held sway. For such studies a systematic logic of plausibility or probability

The function of the humanist textbooks

with an increasingly humanistic bias. In all of them philosophical questions

Summary and conclusion

39. Ashworth 1974a, p. 9.

study of philosophy and theology, scholastic logic continued to be taught

this topic is of peculiar interest to them.46 They also tend to be extremely

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