RAMUS (RAMUS, de la RAMÉE), PIERRE. - French humanist, born in 1515 at Cuth (Soissons) and killed on the third day of the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre (26 Aug. 1572).
Nourished on classical studies, he soon grew disgusted with the still predominant Aristotelian philosophy. The reading of Xenophon and Plato inspired in him a love for the Socratic method. Barely twenty years old, he earned his doctorate in arts (1536) with a disputation in which he maintained that “quae cumque 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, where he taught rhetoric alongside readings and commentaries on Greek and Latin classics. Soon, following the example of Lorenzo Valla and Ludovicus Vives, he added dialectic to his rhetoric teaching, striving to free it from scholastic formalism. In 1543 he published in Paris the *Dialecticae partitiones* (republished in 1553 under the new title *Institutionum dialecticarum libri III*) and the *Aristotelicae animadversiones*. These works were attacked by Pierre de La Ramée of the Sorbonne and by the Portuguese jurist Antonio de Gouvea; they were censured by the faculty of theology and suppressed by royal decree on 1 March 1544, while the university demanded the author’s imprisonment. Suspended from teaching, he was tasked with reorganizing the Collège de Presles, which under his leadership became one of the most flourishing in the Parisian university, so that he soon became the target of fresh 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 inaugural lecture *Pro philosophica disciplina* before two thousand listeners. From this chair he proceeded to expound, one after another, all the liberal arts, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. In 1554 he was attacked by Jacques Charpentier, who wrote his *Animadversiones in II. III institutionum dialecticarum P. Rami*, and in 1566 the *Orationes contra Ramum*; Charpentier became his most implacable enemy.
Ramus held Aristotelian logic to be artificial, and, possessed as he was of a humanistic spirit, he proposed a return to natural logic, innate in all men and exemplified by the Socratic method in Plato’s dialogues. At the heart of this dialectic stood the question, that is, the problem which man is progressively led to pose regarding a given subject and which he resolves through inquiry (inventio with its loci communes) and judgment, unfolding in three stages: syllogism, system, and the reduction of all sciences to God. This humanistic reform of dialectic aimed to replace Aristotelian analytics with Cicero’s oratorical “invention.” Through the very practice of speaking and writing, natural logic is perfected and becomes an art.
In 1561 Ramus adhered to Calvinism. During the first war of religion, forced to abandon Paris, he returned 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 visited the reformed universities of Switzerland and Germany. Returning to Paris, he found himself ousted from the directorship of the Collège de Presles and removed from his teaching post at the Collège Royal. In vain he appealed to the Cardinal of Lorraine; in vain did he hope to be received in Geneva, where Beza was too suspicious of the spirit of independence Ramus displayed even in the *Defensio pro Aristotele* (Lausanne 1571), against the contentious Protestant theologian Jakob Schenk. His murder was instigated by Charpentier’s denunciation.