Rudolph Agricola’s De inventione dialectica has rightly been regarded as the most original and influential textbook on argumentation, reading, writing, and communication in the Renaissance. At the heart of his treatment are the topics (loci), such as definition, genus, species, place, whole, parts, similars, and so on. While their function in Agricola’s system is argumentative and rhetorical, the roots of the topics are metaphysical, as Agricola himself explicitly acknowledges. It has led scholars to characterize Agricola as a realist or even an extreme realist. This article studies two little treatises on universals by Agricola that throw further light on his realism. It is suggested that they could be viewed as an early step in his long-term project of revising and re-organizing the systems of topics as he encountered them in Aristotle, Cicero, and Boethius. The article offers a close analysis of the treatises, suggesting that Agricola’s realism owes a (general) debt to the school of the Scotists. In both earlier and later work Agricola emphasizes the common aspects of things that enable us to categorize and talk about things without denying their fundamental unicity and individuality. An edition of Agricola’s second treatise on universals—a reply to a critic—is added.
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Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, 100; cf. 98: “Agricola’s dialectic makes no issue of being anti-Aristotelian as Ramus’ was to do.”
E. Kessler, ‘Die verborgene Gegenwart Ockhams in der Sprachphilosophie der Renaissance’, in Die Gegenwart Ockhams, eds. W. Vossenkuhl and R. Schönberger (Weinheim, 1990), 147-164, on 151: “in Analogie zu Ockhams Definition des universalen Zeichens.”
M. Friedrich, ‘ “War Rudolf Agricola Nominalist?” Zur Bedeutung der Philosophie Ockhams für den Sprachhumanismus’, in Res et Verba in der Renaissance, eds. E. Kessler and I. Maclean (Wiesbaden, 2002), 369-388.
H. A. G. Braakhuis, ‘Agricola’s View on Universals’, in Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius, 1444-1485, ed. F. Akkerman and A. J. Vanderjagt (Leiden, 1988), 239-247; Pierre Lardet’s review of this volume in Rhetorica 8 (1990), 280. Also, Kees Meerhoff, ‘Ramus en tijdgenoten’, Lampas 34 (2001), 352, does not seem very sure whether Agricola can be called a realist. But Agricola’s contemporary Wessel Gansfort thought him to be a realist; see H. A. G. Braakhuis, ‘Wessel Gansfort between Albertism and Nominalism’, in Wessel Gansfort (1419-1489) and Northern Humanism, ed. F. Akkerman et al. (Leiden, 1993), 35.
Noone, ‘Universals and Individuation’, 121; Gracia, ‘Individuality and the Individuating Entity’, 246-47.
W. Irtenkauf and I. Krekler, Codices poetici et philologici (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981), 102-104 with reference to older literature on p. 102. [http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/hs/katalogseiten/HSK0076_b102_jpg.htm]. See also L. Mundt’s edition of the DID (Tübingen, 1992), 659-62.
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Rudolph Agricola’s De inventione dialectica has rightly been regarded as the most original and influential textbook on argumentation, reading, writing, and communication in the Renaissance. At the heart of his treatment are the topics (loci), such as definition, genus, species, place, whole, parts, similars, and so on. While their function in Agricola’s system is argumentative and rhetorical, the roots of the topics are metaphysical, as Agricola himself explicitly acknowledges. It has led scholars to characterize Agricola as a realist or even an extreme realist. This article studies two little treatises on universals by Agricola that throw further light on his realism. It is suggested that they could be viewed as an early step in his long-term project of revising and re-organizing the systems of topics as he encountered them in Aristotle, Cicero, and Boethius. The article offers a close analysis of the treatises, suggesting that Agricola’s realism owes a (general) debt to the school of the Scotists. In both earlier and later work Agricola emphasizes the common aspects of things that enable us to categorize and talk about things without denying their fundamental unicity and individuality. An edition of Agricola’s second treatise on universals—a reply to a critic—is added.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 662 | 48 | 2 |
Full Text Views | 171 | 5 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 91 | 13 | 0 |