Ramus

Ramus 1515-1572

 * **Reduced grammar to stylistics and figures of speech. Rhetoric is decoration. Everything else is logic. He puts it in dialectic but there is no dialogue – he is not just anti-rhetoric, he is anti -dialogue **
 * Distinguishes reason and language and implies that you can be reasonable without words (there is a whole bunch of philosophy that attempts to reduce language to math – symbolic philosophy)
 * **For Ramus, each word is univocal – 1 word and 1 meaning **. If not, you are stupid or lying (vituperatio – hate speech)
 * First to use visual aids. Can make a case that he invented them. For Ramus ideas are objects – uses a spacialized logic – exists in an imaginary mental space – you have ideas floating around there – commonplaces that bump into each other and form syllogisms.
 * **Ramus depersonalized rhetoric (but breaks all of his own rules as he writes) – there is NO AUDIENCE, no personal voice, no subject – completely spacialized and objectified **
 * Doesn’t need inventio. Does not matter WHERE you start or to WHOM you are talking, you just proceed with logical progression – logic is logic and the subject will generate its own organization.
 * **Ramus thinks an argument is anything you say about anything – does not matter where it starts **. It is true if it logically follows premise and it does not matter if the premise is not true. (this also plagued Descartes – if you can think of it, it’s true because it is a starting point to logic. “First Principle” – where you start became essential problem of philosophy)
 * **There can be no counter arguments – you are proceeding logically. In Ramism there is no contact between opposing positions – no search for common ground, no dialogue –exact opposite of Socrates. **
 * **Took invention, pathos, ethos away. **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Aristotle, Quintilian, Cicero all wrote rhetorics with Topics (different from logical topics. Ramus combined logic topics with rhetorical topics – he doesn’t care if arguments are sound.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Ramist method – binomial division (method of methods) a process of division and subdivision (mostly 2’s, sometimes 3’s)– all you have to do is fill in the blanks
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">No virtue involved at all. Rhetoric is reduced to style – no moral or virtue there. Decoration is suspicious. “Clear and Easy” – followers of Ramism addicted to this
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Also no room for virtue in logic – you can be logical about right and wrong but the rules of logic are not moral. Training in logic cannot make you better or worse, only smarter. (Opposite of Erasmus who thinks that reading and writing in rhetoric will make you virtuous)
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Problem with Ramism – logic – there is nothing to tell you if the premise you start with is true – Ramus did not care. **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ramus always giving definitions but never defining terms in definitions **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Did enormous damage to Rhetoric. Ramism did not take great hold in Europe but did get to Harvard University in US and in US Puritan schools.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Ramus was eventually supplanted by Cartesian methodology – Port Royal Logic in France.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Erasmus did not disappear – just submerged and came back as Jesuit Oratio until 1700’s – was eventually overwhelmed by Port Royal school