RAMO (RAMUS, de la RAMÉE), PIERRE. — French humanist, born in 1515 at Cuth (Soissons) and killed on the third day of the massacre of S. Bartolomeo (26 Aug. 1572).
Nourished by classical studies, he soon became disgusted with the Aristotelian philosophy that still predominated. The reading of Xenophon and Plato made him enamored of the Socratic method. Barely twenty years old, he took his degree in artibus (1536) with a disputation in which he maintained that “quaccumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia essent.” He first taught at the Collège de Mans in Paris, then opened his own school at the Collège de l’Ave Maria, for the teaching of rhetoric, accompanied by the reading and commentary of the Greek and Latin classics. He soon brought the teaching of dialectic within that of rhetoric, following the example of Lorenzo Valla and Lodovico Vives, and endeavored to free it from scholastic formalism. In 1543 he published in Paris the Dialecticae partitiones (republished in 1553 under the new title Institutionum dialecticarum II. III) and the Aristotelicae animadversiones. Attacked by Pietro di Perim of the Sorbonne and by the Portuguese jurist Antonio di Govea, the two writings were censured by the faculty of theology and suppressed by royal decree of 1 March 1544, while the University demanded that their author be sent to the galleys. Suspended from teaching, he was charged with reorganizing the Collège de Presles, which under his direction became one of the most flourishing colleges of the University of Paris, so that he soon became the target of new accusations. With the protection of the cardinal of Lorraine, a chair was created for him at the Collège Royal (1551), where he delivered the celebrated opening lecture Pro philosophica disciplina before two thousand listeners. From this chair he proceeded to treat, one after another, all the liberal arts, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. In 1554 he was attacked by Giacomo Charpentier, who wrote his Animadversiones in II. III institutionum dialecticarum P. Rami, and in 1566 the Orationes contra Ramm; Charpentier was his most implacable enemy.
R. considers Aristotelian logic artificial and, endowed as he is with a humanistic spirit, proposes a return to natural logic, innate in all human beings and represented by the Socratic method in Plato’s dialogues. At the center of this dialectic stands the question, that is, the problem which man is gradually led to pose concerning a given subject and which he resolves through inquiry (the inventio with its loci communes) and judgment, which unfolds in its three stages: the syllogism, the system, and the reduction of all the sciences to God. This humanistic reform of dialectic tends to substitute the Ciceronian oratorical “invention” for Aristotelian “analytics.” Through the practice of speaking and writing, natural logic is perfected and becomes an art.
In 1561 R. adhered to Calvinism. During the first War of Religion, forced to leave Paris, he returned there after the Peace of Amboise (1563), to resume his lectures at the Collège Royal. During the second civil war he took refuge with the prince of Condé. Threatened with reprisals, he left France (1568) and undertook to visit the Reformed universities of Switzerland and Germany. Returning to Paris, he found himself expelled from the direction of the Collège de Presles and dismissed from teaching at the Collège Royal. In vain he appealed to the cardinal of Lorraine; in vain he hoped to be received in Geneva, where Beza was too suspicious of the spirit of independence that R. also displayed in the Defensio pro Aristotele (Lausanne 1571), against the quarrelsome Protestant theologian Jakob Schenk. His assassination was brought about by Charpentier’s denunciation.