Ramus, Petrus. "The Logick of Peter Ramus" trans. Roland MacIlamine

b. 1502

1536 MA thesis "Whatever is from Aristotle is Contrived"

1543 "Dialecticae Paritiones" & "Aristotelicae Animadversiones" "DP" went through several reprintings and reconstructions as Ramus shaped his logic. Became

1543 "Dialecticae Institutiones"

1581 "Scholae Dialecticae"

(banned from teaching philosophy so...)

1545 Elements of Geometry (trans of Euclid into Latin)

1545 Institutiones Oratoriae

1548 Rhetorica (both with Omer Talon, and under his name)

Ramus in a nutshell:

Logic is the first art, the center of liberal studies and the chief instrument of communication. It consists of inventio and dispositio. Inventio is the all the topics and places of investigation, dispositio is anything concerned with the arrangement of material- proposition, syllogism, and method. There are two primary methods of arrangement: from the general to the specific (definitions to examples) and, for a popular audience, the method of prudence, media res.

The First Booke of Dialecticke

(10) Dialeckticke other called Logicke, is an arte which teaches to dispute well. It is divided into two parts: invention, and jugement or disposition.

Invention is the first part of dialectic, which teaches to invent arguments.

An argument is that which is naturally bente to prove or disprove any thing, such as be single reasons separately and by themselves considered.

An argument is either artificial or without art.

Artificial: Simple (primary) or compared (derivative)

Simple: either agreeable or diagreeable

Agreeable: agrees absolutely, or after a certain fashion.

Absolutely:

1) cause and effect. "The cause is that by whose force the thing is: and therefore the first place of invention is the fountain of all the sciences: for the matter is known perfectly, whose cause is understood."

A cause is either a) efficient and material or b) formal and final

a) efficient is a cause from which the thing hathe his being. It is either 1) solitary or 2) joined with others, which may be principal and chief doers, or other helpers and servers of the principal, or 3) works by itself or by accident ("by accident the cause worketh, which by some external power works, as in those things which are done by necessity or by fortune") (p13)

b) formal and final (p15) "The formal cause is that by which the thing hathe his name and being. And therefore everything is distinguished from another by its form. THe thing is also engendered together with the thing itself: as, a reasonable soul is the form of man, for by it Man is man, and is distinguished from all other things"

The final cause is "that for which the thing is made or done. The end of natural things is man, and of man God. Also, every art has the final cause: as, The end of Grammar is to speak congruously, of Rhetoric, eloquentlie, of Logic to dispute well and orderly" (16-7).

2. Effect "that which rises from the cause" (17)

3. The Subject "is that which hath anything adjoined to it, as, the soul is the subject of knowledge, ignorance, virtue, vice, because these are added to the soul, besides the substance of the same.The body is the subject of sickness, health, strength, infirmity, beauty, deformity, and such others...A place is the space in which a thing is contained.." (18)

4. The Adjunct "is that which hath a subject to which it is joined: as, virtue and vice are adjuncts of the body and soul: and to be short all things that do chance to the subject, beside the essence, is called the adjunct: as time, quality, either proper, laughing to men, barking to dogs.." (19)

(disagreeable arguments- those which disprove)

5. Opposites (separated into disparates and contraries) "may not be attributed to one part of one thing after one respect, and at one time" (21)

6. Relatives (contraries) "the relatives are contrary affirmatives" (22)

test

test post

Derrida

"Where a Teaching Body Begins and How it Ends" from Who's Afraid of Philosophy? Right to Philosophy I. Stanford UP 2002.



(68) on the the targets of Greph, which ought to link its actiity with that of a research and information group about the publishing machine. Manifest (undisguised), the intention of what you read right here is a call for such activities, on the spot.



Here, for example, is not an indifferent place... (69)one must therefore avoid naturalizing this place. Naturalizing always, very nearly at any rate, amounts to neutralizing. By naturalizing, by affecting to consider what is not and never has been natural, one neutralizes...One conceals, rather, in an effect of neutrality, the active intervention of a force and machinery.



By passing off as natural (and therefore beyond question or transformation) the structures of the pedagogical institution...one carefully conceals the forces and interests that, without the slighest neutrality, dominate and master- impose themselves upon- the process of teaching from within a heterogeneous and divided agonistic field wracked with constant struggle.



But power itself is neutral, even if its workings never are?



(70) ..I am beginning to critique systematically..I am beginning by beginning to do so systematically and effectively: it is the systematic character that is important if one does not wnat to remain contect with verbal alibis, skirmishes, or scrapes that do not affect the system in place.



Does systematically mean that he is creating a logic, a paradigm, a rational system for others to follow (the workings of the math problem so other's can follow the process, which in turn creates a logic)? And systematic implies groups, relationships, multiple persons, and engagement with institutions?



(71) the work in which I was involved...the (affirmative) deconstruction of phallogocentrism as philosophy- did not belong simply to the forms of the philsophical institution. This work, by definition, sdid not limit itself to the theorectical, or even cultural or ideological, content.



(72)This work, then, tackled the ontological or transcendental subordination of the signifying body in relation to the ideality of the transcendental signified and to the logic of the sign; it tackled the transcendental authority of the signified as well as the signifer, and therefore that which constitutes the very essence of the philosophical.



Because the philosophical, in his terms, assumes that at least the logic of the sign is transcendental? So philosophy is accused of some kind of "objectivism" at the heart of its project, whereas deconstruction, of course, has at its center a kind of relativisation, or maybe, better, relationality (by which I mean the exposures of the relations of dependence). Dependence ultimately, for me, on acceptance- one can't see a logic until one chooses to (for whatever reason).



He then proceeds to take down philosophy as metaphysics, and the university structure as grown from and rooted on this. So really, he's with Friere: lets reset the context by which a mind learns to see, because its all about seeing and creating for oneself.



(79) Wherever teaching takes place, therefore- and in the philosophical par excellence- there are, within that field, powers, representing forces in conflict, dominated or dominating forces, conflicts and contradictions (what I call the effects of differance).



(81) As its name indicates, it always puts into practice, whether openly or not, choice, filtering, selectivity, election, elitism, and exclusion. The passiage I am speaking of describes the teaching of philosophy in the eighteenth century, in France: "it must not be forgotten that instruction was accompanied by an education that was religious in inspiration. Pedagogical practice always lags behind mores, no doubt because teaching is more retrospective than perspective"



Of course, deconstruction is not neutral, either, it premises as strong a system of mores, and now that it is dominant is just as coercive and seemless a world-view in its assumptions and condemnations.



the outdated structure of teaching can always be questioned as repitition...It originates in the semiotic structure of teaching, the practically semiotic interpretation of the pedagogical relation: Teaching delivers signs.



(90) His body becomes teaching when, the place of convergence and fascination, it becomes more than a center.



Right. It becomes a context.



(91) The capturing by erasure, this fascinating neutralization, always takes the form of a cadaverization of my body. ..Erasure, here indeed, on the one hand, the erosion of a text, surface, and its textual marks. The erosion is indeed the effect of a suppression and an repression, of a reactive bustle. On the other hand, and at the same time, erasure makes disappear, by sublime annihilation, the particular characteristics of a facies and of everything in the face that cannot be reduced to the vocable and audible.