Early Aristotelianism Between Humanism and Ramism
Early British Aristotelianism, after the momentous medieval Scholastic systematization of Aristotelian philosophy, was defined by its position against humanistic logic and Ramism. It was not a particularly advanced form of Aristotelianism and chiefly invo
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Early Aristotelianism Between Humanism and Ramism
5.1
Aristotelianism, Humanism and Scholasticism
Early British Aristotelianism, after the momentous medieval Scholastic systematization of Aristotelian philosophy, was defined by its position against humanistic logic and Ramism. It was not a particularly advanced form of Aristotelianism and chiefly involved commentaries on Aristotelian texts, but it rejected any kind of rhetorical and dialectical logic that did not serve science. The protagonists of this early period of Aristotelianism were Richard Stanyhurst, Everard Digby and John Case. It is hard to say whether these logicians were acquainted with the development of Paduan and Continental logic. This is because in their logical works they were not inclined to mention Paduan Aristotelians, and because their interpretation of some central Aristotelian issues diverged consistently from those of the Continent. Nonetheless, we can find explicit traces of Paduan Aristotelianism in other works of the time not strictly connected with logic, and we know that Paduan logical doctrines were well known in their intellectual context. If there was a Paduan influence on these Aristotelian scholars, it must have been weak and bland. However, the doctrines of such Aristotelians with their conception of logic as an instrument of science certainly paved the way for a more systematic appropriation of the ideas of Continental Aristotelianism in the following decades. The first genuine Aristotelian of the period was the Dubliner Richard Stanyhurst, who was educated at Oxford. His most important work is undoubtedly the 1570 Harmonia seu catena dialectica, which is according to Schmitt ‘an impressive piece of scholarship comparing favourably with the very best work being done on the Continent at the same time’.1 This work was the first exposition of the Aristotelian logical system available in the British Isles in the sixteenth century.2
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Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England, 43. Cf. Colm Lennon, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner 1547–1618 (Blackrock, 1981), 26–33.
M. Sgarbi, The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 32, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4951-1_5, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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5 Early Aristotelianism Between Humanism and Ramism
The Harmonia was too early to make use of Zabarella’s ideas, and its sources were mostly scholastic and humanistic, as the author reveals in his introduction. However, what most characterizes his work is its copious use of the Greek commentators. This is an absolute novelty in the field of sixteenth-century logic in the British Isles, marking a radical break with humanistic logic, whose ancient sources were only Cicero and Quintilian. Stanyhurst’s work was commissioned by Edmund Campion (1540–1581),3 and it was probably the immediate result of Oxford’s Nova statuta, since Campion himself taught at St John’s. In fact, Stanyhurst’s Harmonia is a commentary on and exposition of Porphyry
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