Peter Ramus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pierre de la Ramée

Petrus Ramus (French Pierre de la Ramée ; * 1515 in Cuts near Soissons , † August 24, 1572 in Paris ) was a French philosopher and humanist .

Life

Ramus came from a humble background, his father was a farmer. At the age of eight he fled from his native village in Picardy to Paris, where at the age of twelve he joined the Collège de Navarre as a servant. He taught at the Collège de France from 1551 and converted to Calvinism in 1562 . Therefore he had to temporarily end his teaching activity, but was able to resume it in 1563 after the end of the First Huguenot War ( Edict of Amboise ).

His Dialectique (1555) is considered to be the first philosophical book in French.

It is said of a person without judgment that he lacks the “altera pars Petri”. The more common expression that Kant also uses is that he lacks the “secunda Petri” (KrV B 173 note). This idiom relates to the second part of Ramus' logic (Institutiones dialecticae). It deals with judgment (De iudicio).

Ramus was an opponent of the Aristotelian - scholastic philosophy; Even the title of his master's thesis from 1536 supposedly read (according to Liberius ): " Quecumque from Aristotle dicta essent, commentita esse " ("Whatever Aristotle may have said, be a lie"). Instead, he developed a new, non-Aristotelian logic . In it he replaced the Aristotelian syllogism (in the Institutiones dialecticae ) with a system of dichotomies (cf. Ramism ) in the tradition of the late medieval logician Rudolf Agricola (1444–1485).

Ramus was murdered on St. Bartholomew's Night in 1572 .

Works

Arithmeticae libri tres , 1557
  • 1543: Dialecticae institutiones , Paris (1553: second edition as Institutionum dialecticarum libri III )
  • 1543: Dialecticae partiones
  • 1543: Aristotelicae animadversiones
  • 1549: Rhetoricae distinctiones
  • 1549: Anti-Quintilian
  • 1555: Dialectique (French; Latin translation 1556: Dialecticae libri II )
  • 1555: Arithmeticae libri III , Paris
  • 1559: Scholae grammaticae libri II , Paris (digital)
  • 1559: Liber de Caesaris militia ad Carolum Lotharingium Cardinalem
  • 1561: Avertissement sur la reformation de l'université de Paris au Roi
  • 1562: Gramere (1572 reissued as Gramaire )
  • 1565: Scholarum physicarum libri VIII in totidem acroamaticos libros Aristotelis (digital)
  • 1566: Scholarum metaphysicarum libri XIV , Paris (digital)
  • 1569: Scholae in liberales artes , Basel (digital)
  • 1571: Defensio pro Aristotele adversus Jac. Schecium , Lausanne (digital)
  • 1577: Commentariorum de Religione Christiana libri IV , Frankfurt (digital)

reception

After Ramus' death, his writings were published by Johann Thomas Frey ( Latinized Liberius or Frigius ; 1543–1583), who saw himself as the philosopher's legitimate heir.

A student of Ramus was the lawyer and counter- reformer Florimond de Raemond , who worked in Bordeaux .

With Francis Bacon's devastating criticism (in Novum Organum , 1620), supporters of Ramus' logic conception dwindled. Modern logic historians such as Carl von Prantl also take a critical view of the author's logical competence and innovation. However, Ramus exerted a great influence on the English and American Puritanism of Arminian style.

The writer Robert Merle describes the murder of the philosopher in his novel The Good City of Paris .

Editions and translations

  • Aristotelicae Animadversiones - Dialecticae institutiones , Paris 1543 (reprint with introduction by W. Risse. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1964).
  • Peter Ramus's Attack on Cicero: Text and Translation of Ramus's Brutinae Quaestiones , ed. by James J. Murphy, trans. by Carole Newlands, Hermagoras Press, Davis CA 1992.
  • La Dialectique (1555), ed. by M. Dassonville, Geneva (Travaux d'humanisme et renaissance 67) 1964.
  • La Dialectique (1555), ed. by N. Bruyère, Vrin, Paris 1992
  • Hans Günter Zekl (translator): Petrus Ramus: Dialektik. 1572. With accompanying texts. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8260-4513-4
  • Quod sit unica doctrinae instituendae methodus , English translation in: Renaissance Philosophy, ed. by LA Kennedy, The Hague / Paris 1973, pp. 108–155.
  • Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian: Translation and Text of Peter Ramus's Rhetoricae distinctiones in Quintilianum (1549), trans. by Carole Newlands; introduced by JJ Murphy, DeKalb, IL 1986.
  • Scholae in liberales artes , Basel 1569, reprint with an introduction by WJ Ong, G. Olms, Hildesheim / New York 1970.
  • Sebastian Lalla (Ed.): Petrus Ramus: Dialecticae libri duo. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2011, ISBN 978-3-7728-2373-2 (Latin text and German translation)
  • Colette Demaizière (Ed.): Grammaire (1572). Geneva / Paris 2001

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Kirchner and Carl Michaëlis: Dictionary of Basic Philosophical Concepts . 5th edition, Leipzig 1907, p. 34, online .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ramus, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ramée, Pierre de la
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher and humanist
DATE OF BIRTH 1515
PLACE OF BIRTH Cuts
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1572
Place of death Paris